Northumbrian Water will start work next month on a £5 million programme to improve Saltburn’s bathing water quality.
Work on the scheme, which starts on 1st December, will involve upgrading sections of the sewer network in Guisborough, Tocketts Bridge and Dunsdale.
The work will significantly reduce the frequency and volume of spills to water courses from the sewer network, during times of heavy rainfall, and will make an improvement to the quality of water in local streams and rivers and also to sea water quality.
Graham Neave, Northumbrian Water’s operations director, said:
"To identify the best solution to improve Saltburn’s bathing water quality, we have worked in partnership with the Environment Agency and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to carry out a three-year investigative study throughout the whole catchment of Skelton, Brotton, Boosbeck, Lingdale and Guisborough.”
"Partnership working is vital as there are many sources of pollution which impact on Saltburn’s bathing water quality, including pollution in Skelton Beck, Saltburn Gill and Pit Hills Stell from cattle, sheep and pig farming, rainfall run-off and pollution from private sewage treatment works.”
The work to improve bathing water quality at Saltburn, which is being undertaken by Northumbrian Water’s contractor Lumsden & Carroll Civil Engineering, is to be carried out at three sites in three phases.
The first phase includes the construction of an underground storm water storage tank, which will hold up to 6,000 cubic metres of storm water, on the former Guisborough sewage treatment works (STW) site. Storm water will be pumped to Marske STW for treatment, once the storm has passed. Work will begin on 1st December and will take up to one year to complete.
The pumping capacity at Tocketts Bridge pumping station is to be increased so more storm water can be transferred from Guisborough to Marske STW when it rains. Work on this site will also begin in December 2014 and will take up to three months to complete.
The third phase of the scheme will involve work to transfer waste water from Dunsdale STW to Marske STW, where it will be treated and also disinfected with ultra violet light before being discharged to sea through the existing long sea outfall. Waste water which is treated at Dunsdale STW currently goes into Skelton Beck. More than 100 metres of new sewer pipe will be installed as part of the project.
Northumbrian Water is hoping that this work, which will take up to three months to complete, will begin in late January 2015.
Mr Neave added that Northumbrian Water had invested £1 billion over the last two decades to improve bathing water quality. However, the water company is not complacent – from 2015 tighter bathing water standards will be introduced and Northumbrian Water is to invest more than £2 million to carry out investigation work to understand how bathing water quality can be further improved at various locations in the region.
In 2011 Northumbrian Water was the first water company to have more than 90% of its bathing waters pass the current strictest European water quality standard, known as ‘guideline’.
Since 2000, Saltburn’s bathing water has achieved guideline or the lower water quality standard, ‘mandatory’, for eleven years. It has only failed the current European standards on just two occasions, in 2010 and 2012.
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