Huge Scarborough bathing water quality project could start later this year
A huge project to improve water quality in Scarborough could start later this year, Nicola Shaw has said.
Water quality at Scarborough’s South Bay is classified as ‘poor’, with the North Bay ‘adequate’ and there is a long-term aspiration to get both to ‘excellent’ standard.
A public consultation has recently concluded on options for making improvements. The scheme is part of the company’s wider £8.3bn investment in the region’s water infrastructure.
Yorkshire Water’s chief executive said that while the final design has not yet been decided, the project will cost “north of £100m” and could take five years to complete.
“We’d like to be on site to do the first bit of work by the end of this year,” she said.
“We’re working out exactly how long it is going to take. Hopefully we can keep disruption to a minimum.”
She said the layout of Scarborough and its current water network makes the project a challenging one.
“Scarborough has got an interesting geography, you come off to the hills, down to the bay with a big castle in the middle, a number of becks coming in with big steep-sided almost ravines coming down to the beach.
“Our treatment works at the moment is to the north of Scarborough. You wouldn’t notice it, it was built to look like a barn. To get all the sewage from Scarborough, the whole town from the South Bay and surrounding areas and then from the North bay, what happens is all the sewers converge at a couple of locations in the centre of town - just underneath the castle and another location just underneath the modern railway.
“They pump that sewage up the hill. There are two big pinch points so first we need to make sure they work really well and we have the necessary back-ups.
“These pumps are enormous and difficult to get access to because they are in the middle of tourist areas and people want us out of the way.
“It is a good illustration of the challenge. We’re going to try and take some pressure off them.”
She said the initial idea was for new storage tanks to be built across the town to hold back the flow of water at different locations alongside an increase to the size of the existing treatment works.
But she said: “That’s quite expensive and very disruptive because you have to build these big tanks for storage across the whole town.”
Shaw said alternatives being explored include a new network of underground pipes with the water potentially going to an expanded treatment works at Seamer and ultimately being discharged into the Derwent.
“The Derwent has some challenges with not having enough water in it downstream of that location. It would be good for the environment and requires less storage to be built.”
Following the recent conclusion of the consultation, work will take place with regulator to develop a final plan before work begins.