Sewage Saturday!

Well there's no other way to say it, this morning was full of crap.  Sewage that is.  As our first stop was at Esholt sewage works.  After seeing the amazing Scar House Reservoir last week, this was originally the other end of the water system that Bradford corporation put in.  In 1910, the city had a shocking health problem; cholera was rife from dirty water and the average life expectancy was just 30 years as a result.

We started at the education centre which had brightly painted statues of the worlds daily resting perches outside:

Of course it smelt a bit, but not nearly as badly as I'd expected, and it was really only at the inlet point where it was a bit lively on the nose, the other areas of the site just felt like a massive industrial processing plant - but that's what it is in a way.  Only rather than making a mess of the environment, it is actually there to clean it up ( that is to clean up all our mess ) before returning it to the River Aire.

Evie thought it smelt

!

An amazing tunnel brought the waste water by gravity to the works where it sauntered through some screening filters.  I have to say there was some items visible in there that I never imagine folk would flush - surely that is what bins are for?  But I guess it's easy to think out of sight out of mind.

Various process to separate the sludge and water then go on (some massive separation vats, aeration, and further separation using natural bacteria to clump the remaining sludge and nasty bugs out before clear, clean water heads out of the site.  The site has seen £75million investment over the last 10 years and a further project of £18million to install ground breaking additional thermal hydro something or other (that's the technical term) to separate the sludge even further and more quickly.  Two electricity generating turbines and the burning of the emitted methane gas means the site is aiming to be self sufficient in electricity very shortly (and that's pretty good news, cos pumping water about is pretty expensive!)

It felt like an amazing place, pretty much all controlled by 5 people on site with probes and sensors feeding back to the control centre in Bradford to make sure the system is working well.  Good job because when there are 730,000 people not able to flush their loo or drain their bath it could all go very wrong very quickly!

But of course one of the best features, that is a bit more obvious is the beautiful renovation of an old lab building with innovative seating too.  If this sort of thought goes into these areas, then the core areas would seem to have a similar amount of attention.

Dan