The River Garry - Scotland's most abused river?

The River Garry is a major tributary within the Tay district, which was once especially important for spring salmon. Now it is perhaps the most heavily abstracted river of its size in Scotland, if not the UK.

Water is diverted by gravity from Loch Garry to Loch Ericht by means of a tunnel through the hillside. For much of the time no water flows out of Loch Garry and there is no requirement for Scottish and Southern Energy to do so.

Moving downstream, some flow does then enter from small sidestreams, but in times of dry weather there is still hardly any flow in the river, even several miles downstream from Loch Garry, as can clearly be seen in this photo.

Approximately 9 km below Loch Garry a second abstraction point has been installed to collect this water. The flow is checked at this weir........

......and is diverted into a tunnel, this time diverting the all water to Loch Errochty. Unless the river is very high, the river is dry immediately downstream.

This photo was taken upstream......

And this downstream of the intake on the same day, starkly illustrating the situation.

Over time, gravel accumulates behind the weir. This is excavated out periodically.

The gravel is then dumped on the bank of the Garry forming a veritable mountain of stones. For some distance below the weir the Garry has been starved of gravel for half a century!

Even downstream from the Garry Intake the larger of the side streams flowing into the Garry are abstracted.

Again every drop of water is taken.

Even the tiniest of streams were not overlooked if they were in the way!

In dry weather, what should be substantial tributaries amount to a trickle.

The water from the lower streams is then piped back to the intake. This network extends as far downstream as the Bruar Water, 15km below the main Garry Intake.

Because the side streams are also taken, flow is slow to recover in the Garry. Therefore, during dry weather the Garry has very little flow down to the point at which the Errochty Water joins.

To add insult to injury, since this part of the Garry has so little flow, it has been considered unsuitable for salmon spawning and, to prevent salmon becoming trapped and dying, the weir shown was constructed at Struan with the sole purpose of excluding migratory fish.

In total some 13 miles (20 km) of main river between Struan and Loch Garry (13km up to first intake) plus a number of tributaries have been lost to migratory fish and other wildlife as a result of abstraction. At the present time this plus the significant amount of lost water between Struan and Blair Atholl represents a lost production of perhaps as many as 3,000 early running salmon and grilse per annum. This is equivalent to about 50% of the present run of fish on the River Tummel at Pitlochry Dam.

See even more pictures here