Peel residents may have to put up with 3,000 lorry journeys in the town to remove the silt build up from the marina.

Despite the Department of Infrastructure saying in December that the ’majority of the material will then be pumped along a pipeline back up the River Neb to the pool’, this month’s Tynwald sitting was told something very different.

Infrastructure Minister Ray Harmer, himself a Peel MHK, said: ’The one compliant contractor has said it would not remove [the silt] by pipe but actually remove it by lorry to the lagoon.’

Mr Harmer was responding to a question from former Peel MHK Tim Crookall MLC who had sought clarification over whether the pipe would be used, as stated in the planning application for the temporary lagoon at Ballaterson Farm. It is not known which company has been awarded the contract to carry out the work.It had originally been stated that only a small portion of the silt would be removed by lorry.

But Mr Crookall went on to say that while the new figure of 30,000 tonnes of silt to be dredged, down from 40,000 tonnes, was a ’relief’, he was concerned about the number of lorry movements needed to move it. He calculated that at roughly 20 tonnes per wagon, it would take about 1,500 return trips to Ballaterson Farm, 3,000 lorry movements in Peel in total.

Mr Crookall also asked if the heritage trail, the former Peel railway line, would need to be closed to access the site, to which Mr Harmer said he didn’t know.

In a response to the planning application from the highway services department of the DoI, it is noted that the only way into the lagoon site is the public right of way (PROW) path and details the removal of wooden posts marking the route.

However, it also states that the public right of way must be maintained and it must ’ensure that there would be adequate room for PROW users to pass HGVs.

To protect migrating fish, the process cannot be done in the autumn, meaning dredging is likely to begin in early 2020.