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Thursday, 04 September 2014 06:22

Costain tests boreholes for Severn Trent Water’s Birmingham resilience scheme

Costain is carrying out further work at the Severn Trent Water Edgbaston Depot as part of the Birmingham Resilience Scheme.

The firm has been undertaking the drilling and testing of several boreholes in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham that can be used to provide locally produced water to customers in Birmingham.

Edgbaston has been identified as a source of water that could add five million litres per day to the Birmingham public water supply. Costain drilled a pilot borehole at the Edgbaston Depot site in the first phase of the scheme that got underway in 2011.

In phase two of the works that began in 2013, the Costain team drilled two production boreholes.

n 2014, the existing observation borehole was decommissioned as it was deemed unsustainable and Costain is now carrying out pump testing on the remaining three. This phase is expected to last until Summer 2015.

A customer exhibition is keeping local residents up-to-date with developments in the drilling of the three boreholes.

Severn Ttrent Water's draft AMP6 business plan includes a £255 million spend for the Birmingham strategic resilience project, which accounted for £255 million.

£1m revamp of Kenilworth pumping station completed

Severn Trent Water has also separately announced the completion of a £1 million revamp with its contract partner NMC Nomenca of a sewage pumping station in Kenilworth. The improvements mean the pumping station – which passes sewage from Kenilworth to a treatment works in Finham – can now pump 240 litres of sewage every second and almost one million litres every hour.

Severn Trent said the work at the sewage pumping station would also improve water quality in the nearby Finham Brook, with finer filters in place to remove more particles from storm water.