Week starting on 20th October

Hello,

I have left this blog on its own for too long so I have decided to post once a week my tribulations in the Ouseburn, it will help to keep tracks on what happened the previous week.
We had a good meeting last week to discuss the current state of affairs in the Ouseburn after the September floods. The minutes are getting finalised and should be sent to all the members this week. In the meantime, I will start this week to look into the Community Ward Grants as Steve Barrett suggested it could be a good place apply for some funding. The first two projects we have in mind is creating a retention pond near Gosforth Golf Course and some rural water storage in the Upper Ouseburn. For the first project I will try to work with Bob Wilkin and for the second with Steve. I will keep you posted with my progress in the next weeks.
There were a series of emails yesterday between Paul Q, the EA and NWL (Les Hall) regarding Newcastle Great Park Cell I SuDs and the conditions for its possible adoption by Newcastle City Council, all very interesting.
Our position is to push forward with the proposed diversion scheme at the upstream end of Cell I and then work on the SuDs when it will be adopted by the Council.
Paul and I are meeting with Malcolm Newsom tomorrow afternoon to talk about Tyne Rivers Trust projects and a possible collaboration with our little group.
See you here next week.
Sebastien

Update on the OCSG

Hello All,

A quick update to let you know that the OCSG is still active as we have received more funding from the DEFRA, part of the Making Space for Water project. We will host in the next couple of weeks an evening meeting to discuss our current activities and the plan for the next twelve months for the OCSG.
We are currently working with the Environment Agency on a Flood Levy project in the upper Ouseburn, looking at diverting some of the high flows of the Ouseburn to some existing pond, this pond will be linked to the large Cell I pond in order to remove some of the sediments and improve the water quality of the river. We are also working on an action delivery plan for 2009. All of this plus the recent flooding in the Ouseburn and the lower Ouseburn will be discussed in our next meeting.
I will email everybody in a couple of weeks when the meeting date is finalised.
See you all very soon,
Sebastien

Quikmap for the Ouseburn

Dear All,

I am trying to come up with a map for the Ouseburn that everybody can populate online.
here is the start.

OCSG May Meeting - New Beginning or the End is NIgh?

Dear All,

You are all invited to the upcoming Ouseburn Catchment Steering Group meeting it will take place on Tuesday 20th May 2008, between 18:0-19:30, in Room 1.01 in the Cassie Building, Newcastle University.

The meeting will be to discuss the future of the Ouseburn Catchment Steering Group in terms of work and future collaboration.

Please let me know if you would like to attend either via email or telephone.

Paul and I are looking forward to see you all again.

Here are the main agenda items:

1. NEWS ITEMS

Upper Ouseburn MS4W final meeting and project outputs

Invertebrates Sampling Day in the Ouseburn – 7th May

Heritage Lottery Project Update

Newcastle International Airport Site Visit – 9th May

2. WAY FORWARD FOR THE OCSG

Ouseburn Catchment Action Plan

Ouseburn Catchment Role to deliver Water Framework Directive

Source of funding – Awards for All – Else?

3. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

4. NEXT MEETING DATE AND LOCATION

Ouseburn Beasties Sampling Day - Wednesday 7th May 2008

Dear All,

We are organising with Tyne Rivers Trust, Jesmond Dene Rangers and Living Waterways project a micro-invertebrates sampling day in the Ouseburn on Wednesday 7th May. Two members of the OCSG would have been trained by then and we are targeting four to five sites in the Ouseburn catchment:

1. Callerton Pond: We see it as a reference site i.e. in terms of what the Ouseburn should aspire to in the next twenty years;
2. Kingston Park outfall and A1 - Newcastle Great Park area is an excellent location to look at the impacts of the rapid land use changes occurring right now in the Ouseburn catchment;
3. Jesmond Dene - This is the most visited Park in Newcastle and we need to be sure the water quality is good enough for our children to swim in it;
4. City Stadium Culvert - Upstream and Downstream - this area is not monitored by the Environment Agency and it could be worthwhile location for our future monitoring programme.

The sampling will take place at 6pm in a synchronous fashion and the results will be dispatched through this blog and the Tyne Rivers Trust River Watch website. More information will be published on this blog when we get closer to the date.
If you are interested to come along, please contact me through this blog.

Sebastien

DEFRA Making Space for Water - Second Public Meeting

Dear All,

A short email to thank everybody who turned up to last night meeting at the Northumbrian Piper.
It was as successful as the first meeting and it feels that our way of engaging with the public is appreciated. Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday events:

Meeting walk to look at Newcastle Great Park Cell G ponds and the future of A1 runoff remediation.










Picture taken during the evening presentations where Paul Quinn from Newcastle University and chairman of the OCSG, Richard Robinson, Agency project manager and Colin Percy from Newcastle City Council gave an update of the work done in the last six month and proposed some suggestions for the future of integrated urban drainage in the Upper Ouseburn.


The OCSG is and will remain independent and we will be more active in the next few month. Starting with a cleaning up of the Ouseburn on the 7th April and a Ouseburn sampling day on the 7th May.

Keep looking at this space, I will update it weekly and will upload more documents.

Thanks again for your support and if you would like to contribute to this blog, please contact me and I will give you the details to become a contributor.

Sebastien

Newcastle Chronicle Extra article on Ouseburn barrage: Truth or misquote?

Dear all,

I received last week the free edition of the Chronicle and I found this article:
It is the first paragraph which made me jump when mentioned that the barrage was created to clean up a polluted waterway in Newcastle!
As mentioned during our last meeting, the only improvement made to the polluted waterway is to fit screens at CSO along the Ouseburn.
This measure will principally reduce the amount of floating litter existing in the sewer network but will not reduce the quantity of dissolved organic matter present in the water during a large storm event.
I am also on the Ouseburn River User Group that will meet up for the third time on 30th January. As far as I know, this is not a public meeting.
I will post soon some information regarding the November 2007 Jesmond Dene site visit.

Sebastien