£5 million project to protect the Frome in Frampton Cotterell completed
Underground tanks will help preserve River Frome environment
A £5 million investment to help protect water quality in the River Frome in south Gloucestershire has been completed on schedule.
The final touches to a trio of projects that will help to reduce the impact of untreated water being discharged into the 20-mile-long watercourse have been carried out in the village of Frampton Cotterell.
The Wessex Water work, the opening phase of which got under way in the spring of last year, has added nearly a million litres of additional storage to the sewer network in the area.
New below-ground tanks have been built to ease the flow of large volumes of rain into sewers during heavy storms. This excess water can cause nearby storm overflows, which are designed as a relief valve to protect homes from flooding, to automatically discharge before the water can be treated.
Project manager Andy Roberts said: “This substantial investment in Frampton Cotterell will help to protect the River Frome by reducing times when untreated water reaches it via the automatic operation of storm overflows.
“Instead, our tanks will hold back the combined foul and rainwater, which is later returned to the network, via the Frome Valley Relief Sewer, when the storm has subsided and onward to a nearby water recycling centre for safe treatment.
“This is an important part of Wessex Water’s commitment to progressively reduce how often storm overflows operate, something we’re currently spending £3 million a month to do, with plans to significantly increase this.
“We’d like to thank the community in Frampton Cotterell for their patience and understanding while these projects were completed and we will continue to test the tanks to ensure they are operating as intended, while some of the restoration of land around the work sites will continue into the next few months, given the current wet ground conditions.’’
Work got under way last April, with the six-month installation of a £1.5 million tank, capable of holding more as much as 225,000 litres of water, beginning on land next to the Frome Valley Walkway off Church Road in Frampton Cotterell.
Subsequent projects – a similar seven-metre diameter storage tank, with a capacity of 180,000 litres, on land near Nightingale Lane and a larger 10.5-metre diameter (480,000 litres) tank on private land off Cloisters Road, Watley’s End – began during the summer and were both completed this month.
Similar schemes along the River Avon have also been completed or are under way, with storage tanks being constructed in Hanham near Bristol, Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire and Lambridge, in the east of Bath, as well as Saltford.
Wessex Water’s work to progressively and substantially reduce the discharge of untreated wastewater is continuing over the coming years too, with plans for 2025-30 outlining a £580 million investment – more than double the current figure – to reduce the operation of storm overflows, introducing more nature-based solutions and promoting better rainwater management.
The company has asked the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to review how much it can invest in vital water and sewerage improvements over the next five years.
This comes after the industry regulator Ofwat’s final determination on Wessex Water’s five-year business plan allowed for £4.2 billion of total expenditure – 17% short of what the company’s own calculations have shown are required to meet its obligations and customers’ expectations, and support growth in the region.
