Kilcreggan Pier Meeting

Yesterday we held a meeting at Cove Burgh hall to highlight the plans the council have for our pier. Tom Walker and Ali Mills spoke about the pier, the changes planned, the flawed process and what can be done. They also presented the 1:100 scale model of the plans that Ali Mills had constructed. This model shows the complete horror that could be inflicted on our village.

After that James Maclean, a retired consultant structural engineer, did a small presentation about a possible alternative which extended our current pier with a link to a caisson via a walkway. He believed Historic Environment Scotland would have no issue with the B listed pier being altered in this way.

Over 60 people came to the meeting and nobody said anything in support of option 4a. When asked how many people at the meeting knew of these plans prior to our promotion of them only 3 people put their hands up, one of them being the pier master and another the chair of the community council.

The comment and question section at the end of meeting involved much informed comment. While the meeting was primarily for informing the community, we also learned much from the audience. There was discussion about naval engineering, long term maintenance of concrete and the various processes required when planning large scale infrastructure. This included the possible silting up of a large area past the break water and the lack of a published environmental assessment report.