A £5 MILLION project to build giant water tanks to help keep untreated sewage out of the River Frome has finished “on schedule”.
Wessex Water started work last April to build three underground storage tanks, capable of storing 885,000 litres of water between them, at Church Road in Frampton Cotterell, and at Nightingale Lane and near Cloisters Road, Watley’s End.
They have been built hold excess rainwater flowing through sewers back from the rivers during heavy downpours, so it can properly treated later.
Wessex Water, which is in charge of the region’s waste water, has been heavily criticised over the amount of discharges from combined sewage overflows (CSOs), which automatically discharge combined rainwater run-off and foul waste water from homes into waterways during times of heavy rain, to mitigate flooding.
Last year the Voice reported Environment Agency figures that showed the river suffered a total of 4,058 hours of spills from eight CSOs between Iron Acton and Winterbourne.
The new tanks store flood water to keep it out of the three CSOs with the most hours of overflows in recent years at Church Road, Nightingale Bridge and Sunny Acres, off Cloisters Lane.
Pollution in the river, which flows through the area on its way from Dodington to Bristol, has become a political issue, with clean water campaigner Feargal Sharkey visiting during the last general election campaign and Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey describing the number of sewage overflows into the river as a “disgrace” during a visit in October, when he and Thornbury & Yate MP Claire Young walked through the water in Frampton.
Wessex Water says the Church Road tank can hold as much as 225,000 litres of water, the Nightingale Lane tank holds 180,000 litres and the tank on private land at a farm off Cloisters Road holds 480,000 litres.
Tanks will ‘hold back’ foul water
Project manager Andy Roberts said: “This substantial investment in Frampton Cotterell will help to protect the River Frome by reducing times when untreated water reaches it via the automatic operation of storm overflows.
“Instead, our tanks will hold back the combined foul and rainwater, which is later returned to the network via the Frome Valley Relief Sewer, when the storm has subsided and onward to a nearby water recycling centre for safe treatment.
“This is an important part of Wessex Water’s commitment to progressively reduce how often storm overflows operate, something we’re currently spending £3 million a month to do, with plans to significantly increase this.
“We’d like to thank the community in Frampton Cotterell for their patience and understanding while these projects were completed and we will continue to test the tanks to ensure they are operating as intended, while some of the restoration of land around the work sites will continue into the next few months, given the current wet ground conditions.’’
Wessex Water is also working on similar schemes along the River Avon, including at Hanham, Saltford and Bradford-on-Avon.
More information on the projects can be found here.