£9.5m water resilience project starts in Malton and Norton

Yorkshire Water is set to invest £9.5m in its North Yorkshire water supply, to ensure the resilience of the local network and meet future demand as part of its long-term water resource management plan.  

The significant project at Malton and Norton Water Treatment Works will involve drilling a new borehole, building a new service reservoir, and constructing a new pumping station.  

Project partners, Marriott, will begin the first stage of the project on Monday 9 March: the drilling of a new borehole - a large shaft used to extract water from deep underground, where it is naturally filtered through soil and rock, requiring minimal treatment before it is safe to use.  

Drilling a borehole typically takes up to three weeks, with a testing period to follow.  

Cat Smart, project manager at Yorkshire Water, said: “We’re making significant investments into our water resources over the next five years in order to meet future demand. Boreholes are an important part of our strategy for maintaining supply in the long-term, and we already have borehole projects underway in East Ness and Brayton Barff – expected to bring an extra 21 Ml/d of raw water into the network. The new borehole at Malton and Norton, where over a thousand new houses are in local development plans, is an equally important part of these plans.” 

The new service reservoir, built by contract partners Peter Duffy Ltd, will hold 3.8 million litres of treated drinking water.  

Service reservoirs store treated drinking water before it is delivered to customers in the local area, significantly increasing the resilience of the network.  

A new pumping station, to allow the treated water to be moved around the network, and a new pipeline, to transfer raw water from the aquifer to the treatment site, will also be built as part of the project.  

The project will be taking place along Beverley Road, YO17 9PJ, on the outskirts of Norton, and is expected to complete in winter 2027. 

Cat Smart, project manager at Yorkshire Water, said: “We’ll be doing our best to keep disruption to a minimum whilst we’re working on this really important project. Thank you to everyone in the area in advance for their patience and understanding.” 

This work is part of Yorkshire Water’s water resources management plan to help ensure there is sufficient water to meet Yorkshire’s customer demands in the future.   

The project is part of a £34m investment over the next five years to introduce new water resources to Yorkshire.