Manx Utilities is currently in the middle of a £1.71million project which will see the replacement of a 4km water main, running from Ronague to Ballakillowey.

The contractors working on the pipeline require a 12-metre wide working corridor through the fields along the route. This has meant the authority working with no less than 26 farmers and landowners, with farmers rescheduling cropping and moving livestock.

An MUA spokesperson said: ’Firstly we would like to thank all 26 landowners for their help and support in order to progress this project ahead of schedule.

’We have consulted with landowners and where possible we have altered the route to avoid fields with crops, domestic gardens and wetlands.

’Some crops have been affected, which was unavoidable due to connection points, existing services and the topography of the land.

’In some instances we have agreed to delay the entering of land until a crop can be taken, or worked with farmers to take a ’hold crop’ before the land is stripped. Where compensation has been necessary for crops, DEFA’s approved agricultural compensation rates have applied.

’In addition where possible we have changed the route of the main to run alongside field boundaries to minimise disruption and to prevent the creation of inaccessible areas where crops could not be harvested. Furthermore, we have relocated valve box lids situated in the middle of fields to the boundary, to help farmers causing accidental damage in the future.’

Paul Costain is one of those farmers affected. Thirty acres of his own land at Earystane and another 10 acres he leases at Ballakilpheric are on the pipeline route.

The Earystane fields are down to grassland but the planned route through them has been changed slightly, as Paul explains: ’This original line comes through a curragh. It’s a habitat that was already there and we’ve fenced off it to keep it that way.

’There’s horsetail, reeds, orchids, lichen, mosses - it’s just a willow curragh really - so rather than them go in and spoil all that habitat they’re going straight across one of our fields.’

The land Paul leases at Ballakilpheric was down to barley for whole cropping and he has lost some of the crop where the contractors’ working corridor goes through the fields.

’But we’ve been paid compensation for the crops that have been lost,’ he says.

Landowners along the route have also been paid the standard wayleave payment, negotiated by the Manx NFU. For safety reasons, fencing has been put up along the length of the working corridor, with gates put in to allow livestock to be moved.

Paul says that he found the MUA ’easy to deal with’ and singles out Belinda Leach, who met with all the landowners, as being especially helpful: ’She was Manx NFU secretary so she knows everyone.’

And, as Paul points out, the new main ’is a necessity’.

The main provides a strategic link by transferring water from Ronague Service Reservoir above Earystane into Ballakillowey, Surby and Port Erin (west) and has been failing with increased frequency affecting over 200 customers.

David Cooil farms above Ballabeg and also leases land between Earystane and the Colby River. He hasn’t been quite so pleased with the project, especially with the timing.

He said: ’We ended up mowing and baling barley to clear a strip for them. I tried to argue with them to hold it up because it was very short notice and I think in future they need to give us more notice.

’As far as I’m concerned they should have been talking to us this year about doing the pipeline next year. Instead they arrived with us three weeks after we’d planted the barley.

’The route goes across a 14 acre field and a seven acre field.

’We had barley in both and we probably lost two and a half acres in all.

’If they’d have come to us in better time we’d have done something different with those fields.’

David, along with Will Qualtrough, has done most of the fencing for the project, about 4,500 metres in all, with Paul Costain completing a further 2,000 metres over his own land.

Interestingly, the route the pipeline follows will take it through a little field at Scollaby which has a spooky reputation.

This field has remained uncultivated for years, due to a local superstition that ’anyone who started to plough it never lived to finish it.’

’We will be very respectful of this,’ the MUA spokesperson told us.