Abstract
Cardiff Bay Barrage is a 1·1 km long impounding structure across the combined mouths of the rivers Taff and Ely in Cardiff, in south Wales. Completed in 1999, the £220 million project has transformed the city's coastline from unsightly tidal mud flats to an attractive 200 ha fresh water lake. It consists of a rockfill embankment flanked by a concrete section containing five sluice gates, three 40 m long locks and a fish pass. This paper describes the construction of the project, from building a major temporary cofferdam and temporary access bridge to dredging operations, piling, concreting, earthworks and caisson installation. It reports in particular on the challenges of working in an urban estuary with a tidal range of 14 m—the second highest in the world.
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