Water & Wastewater Treatment

4 | OCTOBER 2015 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Industry news October The cryptosporidium crisis has forced United Utilities (UU) to put a major multimillion-pound aqueduct maintenance and repair project on the backburner, the company has confirmed. A team of about 450 people was ready to work on the 56-mile Haweswater Aqueduct, which delivers fresh drinking water from Cumbria to Manchester hundreds of metres beneath the ground, from the end of September. A bespoke training camp was scheduled to run from September 21 to ensure everyone was "ready to hit the ground running" at the aqueduct. However, a UU spokeswoman said the company had to pull off many of the people involved with the 56-mile pipeline to deal with "the major incident" which sprung from the discovery of the parasite cryptosporidium at Franklaw Treatment Works. On Sunday September 6th, UU was finally able to Crypto crisis delays UU Haweswater project Contract Tracker Four firms win Yorkshire £100M MEICA contract Nomenca, Cema Clayton Consortium, Eric Wright Group and Damar Group have been awarded Yorkshire Water's new £100M mechanical, elec- trical, instrumentation, controls and automation (MEICA) contract. Part of the five-year contract is ensuring that the 720 sewage pumping stations that have recently been transferred to Yorkshire Water are brought up to the company's standards. EPS and Sisk JV to build Cork works A joint venture between EPS and Sisk Construction has won the contract to design and build the 65,000 population equivalent wastewater treatment facility at Shanbally for Irish Water. The facility, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2017, will serve the Cork Lower Harbour area. NI Water in electricity supply deal NI Water has contracted GO Power to supply its electricity for the next two years in a deal worth £58M. Through the contract, Cookstown-based GO Power will meet 30% of NI Water's metered electricity needs with power generated from renewable sources.. liŒ the boil water notice that had been in place for a month and had affected 300,000 households in large parts of Lancashire. Compensation payouts, which are expected to cost UU at least £15M, have started being sent to customers affected by the boil water notice, with the average settlement ranging from £50 to £60, depending on when the boil water notice was liŒed. Further claims are expected when businesses customers begin appealing for additional compensation as a result of a loss of earnings incurred. A separate letter has been sent to business customers detailing how they can make a claim. The Drinking Water Inspectorate has launched an investigation into the cause of the contamination, and UU also faces a parliamentary inquiry into the incident. Public Health England has stated that there have been no confirmed cases of sickness linked to the water supply in the area to date. The resolution of the crisis came too late to resurrect the Haweswater project, which UU had dubbed "Aquanauts 2 – the big return". UU originally went underground to inspect Haweswater, training 80 carefully selected "aquanauts", assisted by 16 specialist Vehicle Access Systems in 2013 for the first time since the pipeline was built 60 years ago. A UU spokeswoman said: "The work will need doing at some point but won't be going ahead this autumn. The outage has been postponed for a year." Martin Oakes, head of civil engineering at contractor Land & Marine, said: "It's a disappointment because it's work we were geared up to do for the past six months and working with probably up to ten suppliers. The only communication we've had is to say it's been postponed for 12 months." £45,000 The amount South West Water has been fined for breaching environmental controls at Dunkeswell sewage treatment plant near Honiton, Devon, in 2013-14. The case was brought by the Environment Agency. FAT VATS: A 'fats to fuel' recycling project in Bradford plans to expand across parts of the city to harness the bio fuel potential of waste cooking oil, whilst also protecting local sewers. The scheme involves asking local residents in the area to collect their waste cooking oil in tubs, known as 'fat vats', rather than tipping them down the kitchen sink.

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