As many Widewater residents and visitors will recall, a few months ago, the water level in the lagoon fell to a potentially catastrophic low due to problems with the mitigation pipe which during high tides, feeds water from the sea into the lagoon. Thankfully, various agencies including WoW, Lancing Parish Council, Environment Agency and our MP Tom Rutland got together to find and agree a solution to fix the problems and subsequently the water in the lagoon was restored to normal levels.

Since the Mitigation Pipe was repaired, WoW and the various agencies have continued to meet via Zoom video conference every two months to review the situation at the lagoon and the next meeting will take place on 4th November this year.

As part of World of Widewater (WoW’s) commitment to attempt to keep the water at a normal level, we recently used WoW funds to purchase a Stream Flowmeter device. Peter Logan, an associate member of the WoW committee will use the device periodically to monitor the health of the Mitigation Pipe in the hope that any future blockages can be identified quickly and dealt with in a timely fashion.

Having used our new Stream flowmeter device, Peter Logan recently sent WoW’s Chairperson Gill Purnell the following report which Gill will share with the other agencies who were involved in fixing the pipe.

Using instruments and tools kindly provided by WoW, I am collecting as much data as possible to help avoid a similar situation that we experienced earlier in the year.  

Depth, temperature, pH, salinity, and water flow rate at the mitigation pipe, all correlated together with tide height and time.

I’m already seeing some obvious correlations and I’m confident they would show patterns which identify any issues within the lagoon, long before it becomes as serious as last time

To help my analysis – it would be useful to understand the inner workings of the inspection chamber, and the ‘boards’.  Perhaps next time the EA are on site, they could invite me to have a look and explain.

An example of my data; during spring tides I see flow rates of up to 1.3m/s from the inlet pipe, at high tide. 

Correlating nicely to tide height (higher flow at higher tide) 

The lagoon reaches 68cm depth.  However, a few days after the spring tides, when the pipe no longer flows, the lagoon drops to 54cm.  A drop of 12cm I believe is due to the “spill” at the sea end of the pipe. I’m not sure this is how the pipe is supposed to operate. Maybe theres a non return valve which is not working as it should ?

It might not seem like a lot; but if combined with another problem the water levels could drop very quickly