Front page · Cosyford Dam
Let there be lights: the dam up the valley that runs the whole town on water
Pour the wall, drop in the turbine, fill the lake and throw open the gates at dusk. Walter Weir has looked after dams for forty years, and he talks to the water. He says it listens, mostly.
It starts with a phone call from Dilys Watt at the Electricity Co-op, and a narrow gorge up the valley. The wall goes up one lift at a time. A bucket runs to and fro along a cable slung between two hilltops, and you drag it along the gorge and hold to let the concrete out. It is stiff stuff and heaps up where it lands, so the trick is to keep moving and fill the lift evenly up to the yellow line. Then comes the poker: hold it in and drag it along, and the air comes up in bubbles until it is as smooth as a millpond.
Halfway up, the turbine arrives on the back of a lorry. The gantry crane lifts it off, and you bring it over the powerhouse and let go, lining it up with the glowing ring round the pit. If it is swinging or off to one side, it clonks on the rim and waits for you to straighten it up. Once the top lift is on, you turn the big red handwheel on the crest round and round to shut the river’s gate, and the lake fills up behind the wall while the clouds race over and the evening comes on. The old footpath goes under, and the ducks arrive.
Then comes the best bit. At dusk the whole town wants its tea, so you drag the gates open until the power on the meter is in the green, and hold it there. The valves roar, two great white arcs of water shoot out into the river, the turbine hums, and down the valley the lights of Cosyford come on. After that the dam needs running: keeping the lights on through half-time at the big match (when everyone puts the kettle on at once), letting the water out for the canoe club’s kayak race, grabbing branches off the intake screen, patching damp spots, and raising the wall to fill the lake higher.
