Holmebrook Valley Park NFM

Holmebrook Valley Park is a country park west of Chesterfield town centre, with some fantastic wildlife habitat that is already doing a great job of capturing and slowing the flow of rainfall and runoff into Holme Brook, but it has the capacity to do much more. DCRT have instigated activities to help achieve this that so far include the installation of leaky dams across tributaries to the Holme Brook and the restoration of three ponds. The leaky dams are timbers that sit across the channel above baseflows so that water flows freely during normal weather conditions. During high rainfall, however, water backs up behind the dams creating temporary storage pools that help to slow the flow of storm waters into the main river network, reducing pressure on the system downstream.

 A large leaky dam built by volunteers being anchored into place with wooden stakes.

We have also restored three ponds in the park that had had their liners stolen and damaged so that they no longer held water. The liners were removed and the soils beneath excavated and compacted to create larger ponds that hold water for different lengths of time – some acting as temporary storm storage and others creating longer lasting wildlife ponds. We are incredibly grateful to Fletchers Waste Management who kindly donated their time and equipment to restore the ponds.

Pond restoration in action thanks to Fletchers Waste Management.