Lochaber
| Lochaber District 1975-96 |
 | Scot1975Lochaber.png |
|
Lochaber (from the
Scottish Gaelic,
Loch Abar) is now a
Highland Council committee area based on a former
local government district of the
Highland region. It is in the western
Highlands of
Scotland, and includes
North Lorne,
Glen Coe,
Nether Lochaber, the western part of the
Rannoch Moor, the
Road to the Isles,
Moidart,
Ardgour,
Morvern,
Sunart,
Ardnamurchan, and the
Small Isles (
Rùm,
Eigg,
Muck and
Canna).
There is also an earlier sense of Lochaber as a smaller area within the
county of Inverness (Inverness-shire), and a yet earlier sense of Lochaber as a distict covering an area similar to that of the district of the Highland region.
The district of the Highland region was created in 1975 under the
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and defined as consiting of: Ardnamurchan,
Ballachulish and
Kinlochleven areas formerly within the
county of Argyll; and
Fort William and Lochaber areas formerly within the county of Inverness. It was one of eight districts in the Highland region, and local government functions were divided between district and regional councils.
|
Map of Scotland showing the historic district of Lochaber |
The district council was abolished, and the area committee created, when the Highland region became a
unitary council area in 1996, under the
Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994.
See also: Politics of the Highland council areaThe committee area consists of 8 out of the 80
Highland Council wards. Each ward elects one
councilor by the
first past the post system of election.
The area is currently represented by seven
independent councillors and one
Liberal Democrat councillor.
The
Lochaber hydroelectric scheme was a power generation project constructed in the western
Scottish Highlands after the
First World War. Like its predecessor at
Kinlochleven, it was intended to provide electricity for
aluminium production, this time at
Fort William, a little further north. The scheme was initially designed by
engineer Charles Meik but after his death in 1923, the scheme's realisation was left to
William Halcrow, by then a partner in the firm originally founded by Meik's father
Thomas Meik.
The project was finally sanctioned by Parliament in 1921, but construction did not start until 1924; the aluminium smelter was established in 1929 and took about 95% of the 82,000kW of power generated.
The scheme harnessed the headwaters of the Rivers
Treig and
Spean and the floodwaters of the
River Spey (plus a further eleven
burns along the way). The Laggan Dam (213 m long and 55 m high) contained the flow of the Spean in a
reservoir (
Loch Laggan). A 4 km
tunnel then linked this body of water with another reservoir (
Loch Treig) contained by the Treig dam. From here, the main tunnel, until
1970 the longest water-carrying tunnel in the world, an enormous 24 km (15 miles) long and 5 m in diameter, was driven around the
Ben Nevis massif. From the western mountainside, down five massive
steel pipes, the water rushed towards the
turbines in the power house at the
smelting plant.
Howat, Patrick,
The Lochaber Narrow Gauge Railway, Northern Books from Famedram, ISBN 0905489438, now out of print
