Preparatory works at Tilbury

TES was contracted to plant up newly created ditches as part of a plan to provide advance compensatory habitat for water voles, and enable the habitat to mature prior to construction work beginning at the site.

The Port of Tilbury has obtained a Development Consent Order (DCO) via the national infrastructure planning system to build a new Port (‘Tilbury2’) at an old coal burning Power Station site. The expansion project involved the creation of 2.5km new wet drainage ditches which were planted up with mature vegetation, developing an ecologically suitable habitat for the voles to be translocated to. The new ditches were created to replace the 2.5km of ditches that will be lost when the development commences. The TES team carried out the planting in September.

During phase one of the project, TES elected to use mature plants with some coir rolls, grown especially for water vole habitats, along with reeds translocated from elsewhere on the site. All of the plants were grown and produced at the company’s own aquatic nursery in Surrey where numerous marginal, aquatic plants and coir rolls are grown.

TES is a leading supplier of products and marginal and oxygenating plants for use in Habitat Schemes, Bioengineering and Erosion Control industries. Terraqua Environmental Solutions (TES) is a division of the Land & Water Group

By Jake Frith