WET News

4 WET NEWS march 2017 News+ Good monthT- Bad month For environmental charities, which will receive £1.5m-plus as a result of recent enforcement action by the Ea against 26 polluting companies, including Northumbrian Water and anglian Water. For Severn Trent. It finally concluded its £78m take- over of Dee Valley Water. For WS atkins', which saw its share price soar after reports it was approached by ch2m over the possibility of a multibillion-pound merger. For the opposing shareholders who had tried to scupper Severn Trent's takeover of Dee Valley Water. Government must ensure new homes are resilient to flooding • research reveals current planning policies is blamed for not encouraging SuDS sufficiently. L eading engineers, environ- mental scientists, water experts, architects and landscape designers have appealed to the government to ensure that the planned one million new homes are built to be resilient to flooding as planning rules are reviewed. New research by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) supported by a wide coalition of partners, urges government to ensure that drainage of surface water into sewers should be conditional on new developments including high- quality sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), which reduce flood risk by slowing and storing flood water using natural processes. In 2010, Parliament passed a law requiring new developments to include sustainable drainage, but the government put the rules on hold to save money and speed up house-building. The new report argues that this policy freeze has not sped up house-building and has put homes at risk, without saving money. More homes and businesses are at risk from surface water flooding than from any other kind of flood and the problem is increasing with urbanisation and more hard surfaces. Half of floods now result from the sewer and drainage systems being overwhelmed. Managing water at the surface is very oŠen a cost-effective solution to this problem and because SuDS can oŠen be designed to incorporate natural features they provide a wide range of additional benefit from cleaning up water, to wildlife habitats, to providing healthy and attractive places for people to live. The research — which includes the "Big SuDS Survey" of current practice — showed that more than 70% of those involved in delivering sustainable drainage do not think current planning policies encourage SuDS sufficiently. Only 8% believe that the current standards are driving high quality and effective SuDS in England. The authors argue that a new government review is a crucial opportunity to update policy and standards to ensure that everyone can benefit from the protection and amenity offered concrete steel clean water civils waste water FULL REFURBISHMENT SERVICES FOR RESERVOIR & WATER TOWERS, CLEAN & SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS, STEEL/CONCRETE TANKS & VESSELS, SPILLWAYS & AQUEDUCTS, BRIDGES, PIPEWORK, PIPE BRIDGES & OTHER ASSETS. FULL CIVIL ENGINEERING CAPABILITY INC NEW BUILD PROJECTS. PLEASE CONTACT US FOR OUR FULL SCOPE OF SERVICES. CONTRACT WINS • Jacobs Engineering has been selected by Thames Water to provide engineering and envi- ronmental consultancy services for the rest of amP6. The framework operates until 2020, with options to extend to the end of amP8. • Kier has has won a multimillion-pound deal on Severn Trent Water's Birmingham resilience Project. The award of the new 50/50 joint venture infrastructure contract, worth £100m, with Severn Trent on the Birmingham resilience Project is one of several key deals it has won since mid-November. • Lanes is providing wastewater mainte- nance services for Business Stream having become one of two specialist drainage companies to have been awarded a framework contract under competi- tive tender. Sonar technology deployed to map wastewater sludge levels • Probe technology is adapted from that used to profile sludge-build-up in crude oil storage tanks. T he use of sonar technology could "transform" the way in which sludge build-up in settlement ponds and lagoons is monitored and maintained, according to waste management specialist CSG. Lagoons are an established method for treating wastewaters created by site processes such as those performed at oil refineries, petrochemical works, AD plants, sewage treatment works, reservoirs and many other industries. Some are created to be used for the clarification of water while others act as settling ponds where solids are separated. Treated water from the ponds is oŠen re-used in on-site processes. Their main drawback is the accumulation over time of sludge as solids sink to the pond bottom and gradually reduces its original storage capacity, leading to an inefficient solids- liquids separation process and reduced retention time. As the sludge blanket rises, lagoons need to be desludged – a costly process that is oŠen put off as long as possible. Judging the depth of sludge and its underwater contours has typically been a fairly primitive and inaccurate manual operation – sometimes involving a long 'dipstick'. Fareham-based CSG has started deploying its own sonar sludge mapping system to produce accurate surveys for customers seeking maintenance information or planning a sludge removal operation. The sonar probe, co-ordinated with GPS, is mounted on a raŠ and systematically drawn across the whole of the pond's surface, feeding back information every second to a remote computer which produces a colour contour map of the sludge surface. The system has been adapted from patented technology originally devised by CSG subsidiary Willacy Oil Services, and designed to profile sludge build-up in crude oil storage tanks "We're able to give our customers a detailed printed profile of exactly how much, and where, the sludge has formed and the remaining water volume," said Willacy general manager Gavin Lucas. "We think using sonar technology can transform wastewater sludge profiling because most traditional methods of sludge measurement can be inaccurate and time-consuming, but we're not aware of it being used anywhere else in the UK." by SuDS. CIWEM chief exe- cutive Terry Fuller said: "We recognise the urgent need for one million new homes but it is pointless to build in a way that creates flood risk for the future. "Our analysis shows that the main obstacles to high-quality and widely implemented SuDS are political and institutional rather than technical or financial so there is no reason why government should not support stronger policy to deliver sustainable drainage widely." Need to know 70% of the survey respondents think current planning policy does not sufficiently encourage SuDS 75% are not assessing the costs and benefits of SuDS schemes 75% considered that planning authorities did not have adequate in-house expertise to consider the merits of proposals and opt-out applications Only 8% think the current standards are driving high quality SuDS Sustainable drainage systems reduce flood risk by slowing and storing flood water using natural processes "Our analysis shows that the main obstacles to high-quality and widely implemented SuDS are political and institutional rather than technical or financial" Terry Fuller, CIWEM Martin Spray, chief executive officer of WWT, said: "The government's freeze on sustainable drainage policy is a loss for wildlife and a loss for communities. It is time for clarity: developers must include good natural drainage systems for our homes, and government must make sure they are maintained. We can make this change affordable and quickly, delivering new defences and new habitats, without slowing down house-building."

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