Our environmental investments
We're a huge investor in the environment and our mutli-million pound investment programme is helping us to make Yorkshire a cleaner, healthier and more enjoyable place to live.
River water quality is one of the Government's key Quality of Life indicators, as rivers support a variety of wildlife and recreational activity. Our investment is improving over 250 miles of river in Yorkshire -
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Pollution
Over recent years, we've significantly reduced pollution incidents. We're continuing our multi-million-pound programme of improvements at sewage and waste water systems to reduce this even further. Recently, we invested £5 million on CCTV surveying and telemetery in areas prone to pollution.
We've also commited to responding quickly to any pollution incident.
- We'll treat every incident as an emergency and respond within 2 hours.
- The incident will be dealt with continually until it is resolved.
- We aim to resolve most incidents within a day.
Upgrading Yorkshire's sewer overflows
You may never have heard of a combined sewer overflow (CSO) and you're unlikely to have seen one. Most are underground and they're an essential part of the sewerage network.
They relieve pressure in the sewers when more rain has fallen than the sewers can handle. This prevents flooding in houses and streets by diverting water into nearby watercourses such as rivers or the sea.
The Environment Agency gives us permission to use Yorkshire's 2,000 overflows and our work to upgrade them involves installing screens to prevent sewage debris reaching watercourses.
We're working really hard to upgrade or replace over 1,300 sewer overflows in Yorkshire before 2010. We're also installing real-time monitoring, which means we can predict when CSOs may be about discharge and take preventative action to protect the environment. In some cases, we're also installing tanks to store excess flows during storm conditions. Once the storm has passed the tanks then release the flows slowly back into the sewerage system.
The benefit of the work is the improvement in the quality of river and coastal waters which enables fish and wildlife to thrive.
How a CSO works
Waste water is collected from businesses, homes and rainfall entering gullies. During periods of heavy rainfall, to prevent flooding from sewers, excessive flow is stored in tanks or discharged into watercourses through screened CSOs. Once high flow levels have subsided, stored water re-enters the system where it is treated and returned to the river.
