Large defence gates due to arrive for £100m Boston Barrier today

Their arrival across the North Sea from the Netherlands marks another significant milestone in the construction of the £100m Environment Agency scheme.

The vertical sector gates will be one of the final large components of the scheme, which will help protect hundreds of homes and business.

The gates are being transported across the North Sea from Rotterdam by barge, as was the primary barrier gate, which opened in December 2020.

The Boston Barrier scheme is expected to be fully completed at the end of 2022. Work on the scheme, which was identified by the Government as critical infrastructure, has continued in line with the Government’s coronavirus advice.

Adam Robinson, Boston Barrier Project Director for the Environment Agency, said: “The delivery of the vertical sector gates is another exciting milestone in this important scheme which takes us one step closer to final project completion.

“These new gates will replace the current ones installed at the Port of Boston wet dock entrance, which were overtopped in the 2013 tidal surge. They will ensure continuity in the defence and better protection of homes and businesses downstream of the primary barrier gate over the next 100 years.”

The gates will be lifted from the barge by crane onto Self-Propelled Modular Transporters, a type of remotely controlled vehicle, and will be driven to a temporary storage location on site in the coming days.

They will then be installed in the wet dock entrance by scheme contractors BAM Nuttall & Mott MacDonald Joint Venture (BMMJV) later this year.

Once installed and fully operational, the gates will better protect a further 524 properties from tidal flooding. This will take the total number of homes and businesses in Boston being better protected by the scheme to more than 14,000.

Hollandia Infra, the Dutch company which manufactured the gates, have painted the gates with three layers of a 150um technical coating, thereby ensuring they have sufficient corrosion protection for their 100-year design lifetime.

The scheme, along with the adjoining Boston Haven Banks Improvement Scheme – a separate Environment Agency project, which is raising the river banks either side of the Haven – is part of the Boston Combined Strategy, which provides a 100-year flood risk management plan for Boston.

The gates are scheduled to arrive at around 1.30pm, but the Environment Agency warns that the timing is subject to change.