Background
The East Leeds Orbital Route (ELOR) is a key part of the East Leeds Extension, to create a major strategic growth area for the city. Works commenced on the construction of the main ELOR in January 2020 and the route was successfully opened to traffic on Monday 22 August 2022.
The overall objective
A huge groundworks operation moving thousands to tonnes of clay-soils risked widespread erosion; the process by which the land surface is worn away by the action of wind or water.
The project intersected numerous watercourses which were at risk of harm from the sediment laden water.
When soil particles are carried by water and washed into watercourses they cause environmental damage by settling on the riverbed and blocking the gills of fish, causing distress and even suffocation and death.
Balfour Beatty approached a number of different suppliers of water treatment equipment.
Solution
At peak, three separate water treatment systems were deployed at the most sensitive areas of the project. Each system could treat up to 20m3/hr or 40m3/hr (depending on the client’s request) and used careful water pre-conditioning to agglomerate tiny clay particles into larger more rapidly settling clumps, then retained them in a standard gravity-only Siltbuster lamella clarifier.
Siltbuster were chosen because:
- They provided free of charge advice and guidance regarding water disposal options, licencing, consents and regulator engagement
- Their solution was designed using ‘real life’ results from laboratory bench scale testing on a representative sample of runoff water from the Leeds site
- The treatment equipment provides careful, controlled, precise, measurable and optimised reagent dosing
- The risk of ‘carry-over’ or loss of reagent is essentially nil; unlike crude methods of dosing, such as ‘flocc blocks’
- Siltbuster equipment is modular and transportable and so it could easily be moved as the project advanced
- Siltbuster are a tried and tested proven supplier; a reliable partner to Balfour Beatty on this high profile project
