Lochaber

For the medieval weapon, see Lochaber Axe

Lochaber District 1975-96

Lochaber (from the Scottish Gaelic, Loch Abar) is an area of the central and western Scottish Highlands, and a committee area of the Highland Council. It covers 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.

The district was eventually combined into the traditional county of Inverness-shire along with the historic district of Inverness and Badenoch during reorganisation under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, this Act established a uniform system of county councils and town councils in Scotland and restructured many of Scotland’s counties. (See: History of the local government of Scotland).

From 1975 to 1996, local government functions were divided between Lochaber district council and the Highland regional council. In 1996 the region became a unitary council area, and the district council was abolished.

Area committee

The 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 represented by seven independent councillors and one Liberal Democrat councillor.

Lochaber hydroelectric scheme

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 through 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.

Lochaber

Area committee

Lochaber hydroelectric scheme

Further reading