Yorkshire Water turns to reed beds at colliery site

Barnsley, UK - Yorkshire Water has recently completed a £300,000 project, which featured the use of reed bed technology  the old Monkton Colliery wastewater treatment plant at Royston, near Barnsley. The work, which began in October 2007, was delivered by MWH, an environmental engineering and water company.

The original wastewater treatment plant was built to cope with the now closed colliery, so it is massively oversized for the flows it receives from a few nearby premises. Initially the plan was to abandon the works and transfer the flows via a pipeline to the nearest sewer, but as this was over a kilometre away, and involved installing pumps, so an alternative solution was needed.

Yorkshire Water asked MWH to look at the options and it recommended natural filtration via a reed bed as the most cost effective and sustainable solution. Once the water company was convinced that the technology would work, the existing works were demolished, an underground septic tank installed, and a reed bed planted. The tank supplies the primary treatment, allowing solids to settle, with the cleared effluent then passing into the reed bed where it is naturally filtered before draining into the nearby Barnsley Canal.

“This is a low-tech, green solution to wastewater treatment, using the naturally occurring micro organisms around the reeds’ roots to clean the effluent, along with the natural filtration effect of the reed bed itself”, said Bethany Gardner, MWH design co-ordinator for the project. ““The reed bed system needs no power and is completely sustainable. In the past the site had become a target for vandals, but this solution means there is virtually nothing to damage or take. In this case low-tech was the right solution.”

Whole life costs for treatment at Monkton Colliery are now significantly lower than the traditionally powered system, according to John Beaumont, Yorkshire Water project manager. He described the initiaive as "an excellent example of sustainable sewage treatment removing the need for an electricity power supply.