White water courses: Are they sustainable?

Cardiff International White Water

Artificial white water courses, when done well, are some of the best places to keep skills up during the summer and dry periods. But how sustainable are they economically, and is there a better way for new courses to be built?

There’s only one place to go paddling in the UK during a dry period. And that’s an artificial white water course. But they come in many guises, and some are more sustainable than others.

There are three main forms of artificial white water. There are pumped courses such as Cardiff and Lee Valley. There are diversion channels such as Holme Pierrepont and Cardington. And then there are natural river modifications such as Mile End Mill on the Dee, and Tryweryn.

Each has advantages and disadvantages.

• Pumped course
  • Advantages: Reliable water, complete flexibility over design, water can be filtered, can work in a loop with a conveyor to the top again, cleaner water.
  • Disadvantages: Expensive to run, relies on secondary activities such as rafting, expensive for participants, not exactly eco-friendly due to electricity used, can be shallow.
• Diversion channel
  • Advantages: Much cheaper to run, no electricity needed for pumps, possibly more powerful than a pumped course.
  • Disadvantages: Water levels not as reliable, water quality might not be as good, limited locations possible.
• Natural modification
  • Advantages: Nice, natural style environment, cheap to run and maintain.
  • Disadvantages: Difficult to achieve in an environmentally friendly way, susceptible to local politics, susceptible to river levels.

Personally I really love going on these courses. I would barely be able to get out paddling unless they existed. The UK isn’t exactly blessed with reliable water levels at particular times of the year like the Alps, Chile, the US, Africa etc. The UK is entirely reliant on rain to provide the goods. And when it arrives it can either make the rivers go nuts, or not provide enough water at all.

The former scenario suits the experts of course. But for those who are more occasional grade 3-4 paddlers and who do not live close enough to such rivers to go there on a whim to get regular practice, such a scenario often means staying inside. As a result, if the artificial courses didn’t exist I doubt I would still be kayaking.

Expense

The trouble is that on top of travel, constantly visiting these venues is expensive. This is one reason I doubt I will go to the Lee Valley course. Lee Valley requires an assessment of skills be made, costing £10, plus the price per hour of being on the course itself. This used to be around £12 an hour, requiring booking ahead of time. But I have heard that it is now £10.

If it is true however, in my case that would equate to three hours driving and a cost of £20-£30 for 2-3 hours of paddling. I’m told that most people only have enough energy for an hour or two on the Olympic course, therefore the costs are fine. But it doesn’t exactly strike me as a chilled out, fun day with friends. In fact it comes across more like an intense, serious gym session!

Of course such venues make most of their money from other activities, such as hydro speeding, party groups in rafts etc. And that’s understandable. White water kayaking is a niche sport. It would be impossible for a pumped course to remain viable from kayaking alone.

But as a venue that is supposed to have a legacy from the 2012 Olympics, such hourly costs hardly makes the sport accessible to those on lower incomes.

At the other end of the scale Nene White Water in Northamptonshire is an example of what happens when newer, bigger courses are built elsewhere. Nene was the first dedicated pumped white water course built in the UK. While it still runs and is okay for beginners, it is in a bit of a sorry state now, and simply cannot compete with the other more modern options such as Cardiff.

That’s the price of being the first. Better solutions come along later. In comparison to modern pumped courses the features at Nene are tiny, and the channels are incredibly narrow and shallow. The pumps are also unreliable, often breaking down. It needs a monetary injection and a complete redevelopment in a similar way to how the Tees Barrage course was transformed into one of the best course in the country.

But unlike the Tees, the Nene cannot rely on tidal power to provide any of its flow. And that’s a problem because pumped courses are so expensive to run without being propped up by other activities.

Letting gravity provide the solution

The best solution is of course to allow Mother Nature to provide the water power by diverting the flow into a dedicated channel. Holme Pierrepont is the best example of this, and in fact possibly the only credible one in the UK. Cardington is another example, but that is really a flood channel that can be repurposed on a hire basis to have white water features.

HPP, as it is more commonly known, was the first dedicated artificial white water course in the UK, and it is now perhaps showing its age. But it has a number of things going for it that keeps paddlers going back.

For a start it has one of the best dedicated features for freestyle hole work in the inlet gate. Some would even claim it’s one of the best hole features for practicing freestyle in the world. The course is big, and the features are both sizeable and powerful.  It is also set up much more like a river, and it is fairly continuous in nature. The eddies there are viciously recirculating, with random whirlpools and boils, which makes it, shall we say, entertaining to queue up for goes on the many waves along its length! But it is probably still the best artificial course in the UK if you want to practice on some reliable, powerful and continuous water. It is easy to see why the local paddlers there are so good.

But best of all is that at £10 for the entire day, with half day concessions also allowed, it is the cheapest course to go on as well. There are no electrical pumps to maintain, or electricity to be paid for. The only real disadvantage to HPP is that if the river is high the course is closed, and the water quality can be dubious. Although it is monitored regularly.

Modifying a natural water course

Mile End Mill on the River Dee and the Tryweryn National White Water Centre are perhaps the best examples of natural rivers that have been modified in the UK. Tryweryn is particularly good, but it is reliant on dam releases. And although it has “cafe wave”, most of its play features require a few steel nerves to go into. This is because the river is very fast, shallow, and unforgiving if you come out of your boat. Injuries are common here, particularly on the section called The Graveyard.

Mile End Mill on the other hand is much more forgiving. It is a venue widely used for beginners and intermediates. Although whether the features are good or not for playing in depends on an ideal river level.

Modifying a natural river is very difficult, and comparatively expensive to do. With a concrete based artificial course you can tune the features simply by unbolting and moving the flow shaping blocks when the water is turned off. With a natural river you need to be moving rocks around. And that’s not easy. Taking Symonds Yat as an example, it requires waiting until the river is very low, and then using a brand new JCB designed to run on special fuel to go into the river and start shifting the boulders around. Unless those boulders can be properly fixed down, they will get washed away almost as soon as they’ve been put in place. Precisely this happened at Symonds Yat, due to the Environment Agency objecting to the idea of fixing them down. It is why this stretch no longer has any properly defined features other than basic eddies.

The best solution

Clearly the best compromise is a natural flow diversion such as Nottingham. However, in the UK such a diversion system means that for a reliable flow we are restricted to a handful of rivers such as the Severn, Trent (which already has a course), Warwickshire Avon, and the Thames.

The reason we are limited to those rivers is because they have been canalised to ensure a reliable flow depth throughout the year, and as a result of this there are sometimes sections where a lock or weir has a large enough height difference to construct a meaningful gradient for a white water course.

The good news is that potentially a new diversionary channel white water course is being planned near Pershore in Worcestershire. It is currently planned to be made using one of the existing concrete islands that divides the locks from the main weir. I have covered this before, but as is often the case with such projects it has suffered some delays, and still hasn’t been absolutely confirmed as a done deal yet. I’m hoping to know more this summer, but I’m not holding my breath just yet!

Such schemes are unlikely to be possible elsewhere. The reason is that most of the areas where there are weirs (low head dams) with enough gradient to create a truly useful diversionary flow have already been optioned by hydro schemes. This goes for both areas that could have an actual course, and those where the weir height could be redeveloped into a single, good freestyle feature.

The reality is that if some co-operation was emphasised, both white water courses and hydro schemes using such gradients could be made to work together. And unlike many badly planned hydro schemes we hear about around the world, these would be taking place on already canalised/industrialised rivers with the added benefit that a white water course would make it easier for fish to pass through upstream compared to a weir.

But alas this idealised scenario is not being realised. A lack of awareness of the potential from councils, local politics and other factors means that it is an uphill struggle for those wanting to plan such schemes.

Because of this, despite areas such as the West Midlands needing such schemes to save hours of driving just to get on decent moving water, they are unlikely to go ahead. Which is a shame, because it is not just existing white water paddlers who benefit. Local communities benefit from increased trade and activities for people to do, the emergency services get a more convenient place to practice swift water and flood rescue, and with proper consideration the wildlife can benefit as well.