Allt Duisdale Reservoir

Allt Duisdale Reservoir is a former Scottish Water reservoir which served Camuscross, Duisdale and Isle Ornsay.   In February 2009, Scottish Water declared it redundant and put it up for auction.  We heard about the auction only 13 days before the date it was to be sold. 

Working with Sleat Community Trust, we managed to persuade Scottish Water to take the reservoir out of the auction to allow us time to put in a Registration of Interest in Land under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. 

Many months of hard work later, we had succeeded in jumping through all of the hoops required of a community using the legislation and bought the reservoir in October 2010 with funding from Awards for All.  HIE covered our legal costs.

During this process, we commissioned a feasibility study into the hydro potential of the reservoir, with funding from Community Energy Scotland.  Click on this link for the Hydro Feasibility Study, which was undertaken by RD Energy Solutions.

We have also written an interim Biodiversity and Cultural Management Plan for the reservoir.

In April 2011 we heard that we had been successful in securing funding from the Climate Challenge Fund to conduct a detailed Design to Planning Study.  After putting the work out to tender, we appointed Synergie Scotland to undertake this work, which will be completed by early 2012.

We are also working to develop a Sustainable Community Hub, as requested by our community, and are very keen to see if we can develop it in conjunction with the hydro scheme, allowing us to power our community building with electricty generated by our community-owned reservoir.  We also feel that the Hub and the hydro scheme should be used as a powerful educational tool, raising awareness about climate change, carbon emissions and the need to develop more sustainable lifestyles - both as individuals and as communities.