Mystery of Aviemore's Loch Vaa continues to deepen
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The water at a loch by Aviemore has now mysteriously risen to its highest ever level just 12 months after 55 million gallons of water simply vanished from the beauty spot.
The owner of the fishing rights for Loch Vaa has described the rapid change in water level as unprecedented.
Brian O’Donnell has roughly calculated that an extra 80 millions of gallons of water has now found its way back into the spring fed loch, which is on land owned by Seafield Estate.
But Mr O’Donnell, who has run Loch Vaa Fishing for the past five years, is stumped for an explanation just like experts.
He said: “I have no idea why this has happened to be honest. It has hardly rained at all.
“Whilst there has been snow melt, it has been a very slow release so why the water has risen so high and rapidly is a real mystery.
“I have never seen the water level so high in my 20 years of visiting. I can not get the boats out of the loch’s boathouse now. I had to go there with an angle grinder to cut the chains securing them as they were being pulled beneath the water.
“Last year the water level dropped by around 1.4 metres but it has now risen by at least 2.4 metres from this all time low. It is a real strange one.”
Loch Vaa, two miles north of Aviemore, has no streams running into or out of it.
Pushed for possible reasons, Mr O’Donnell believes that drilling in the vicinity of Loch Vaa could be a cause.
He suggested Scottish Water tapping into the huge aquifer at Kinakyle, just south of Aviemore, to provide local drinking water supplies may be connected to the disappearing and re-surging water.
But a spokesman for the utility giant maintains there is no connection. He said: “While there has been some drier weather very recently, many areas had quite a sustained period of wet weather over the winter – and groundwater would generally be expected to respond to weather patterns with a much longer lag time than surface water.
“There is no connection with the Spey aquifers or the boreholes at Kinakyle which have operated normally throughout this period.”
Scottish Water’s £24 million treatment works at Kinakyle opened in 2012.
