Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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Affinity Water chief executive Simon Cocks has announced he will step down before the end of 2018. His announcement follows the sale of the company to new owners in May. Chairman Philip Nolan is also to exit. Cocks will remain as a non- executive director on the board. Thames Water has appointed its first chief digital officer, as it aims to harness digital technology to make improvements in customer experience. John Beaumont joins from Bain & Company, the global management consultant, where he has worked for 12 years; he previously spent five years at Deloitte. The Talk: October ROUND UP PEOPLE MOVES www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | OCTOBER 2017 | 5 VALLEY PRIDE: Workers near the entrance of the second of three huge bypass tunnels being built on Severn Trent's Elan Valley Aqueduct as part of the Birmingham Resilience Project. The tunnel at Nantmel in mid-Wales is over 3m wide and around 1km long. The new tunnels will make the water supply to over a million residents and businesses in Birmingham more resilient. 400,000 the number of households in England and Wales now receiving social tariffs from their water company to help with affordability concerns. A new report from the Consumer Council for Water says this is 'just scratching the surface' of the problem and that 3 million people struggle to pay their water bill each month. NUMBERS Thames tackles 'monster' fatberg Thames Water engineers have embarked on a three-week sewer scheme in Whitechapel to remove a 250m-long fatberg that is the largest it has ever found. The Whitechapel fatberg is a rock-solid mass of wet wipes, nappies, fat and oil weighing the same as 11 double decker buses. It is ten times bigger than the infamous one found in Kingston in 2013 which first brought the problem of fatbergs to public attention. Pollution costs UU £700K in court United Utilities (UU) has been ordered to pay a fine of £666,000 and costs of more than £32,000 a er pleading guilty to polluting a river with untreated sewage effluent in Greater Manchester. The Environment Agency (EA) prosecuted UU a er sewage polluted the River Medlock in 2014. A total 21,700m 3 of sewage was discharged into the water, having a 'significant impact' on fish stocks and water quality in the river, according to the EA. UU said the incident was caused by a faulty control valve at its wastewater facility in Oldham. Achievement awards open for entries The Water Industry Achievement Awards, the biggest awards programme for recognising excellence in the water sector, is now open for entries. This year's edition features 14 categories, rewarding the best initiatives, projects and technologies that have made their mark in the last calendar year. The winner of the top award last year was Bristol Water's pop-up Water Bar, which ran out winner in the Community Project of the Year and Overall Innovation 2017 categories. For information on how to enter this year's awards visit wwtonline.co.uk/awards and download the entry guiide.