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'Crystal' Clears the Way for Cleaner Seas
01 Sep 2006
The Seacore jack-up barge Excalibur has recently been mobilised as part of Southern Water's £80m wastewater treatment scheme that is expected to bring 'unprecedented environmental improvements' to the Kent coastal towns of Broadstairs and Margate.
Completion is planned for the end of 2007, when around 20m litres of wastewater generated daily by the 93,000 residents and visitors to the area will be treated to meet the stringent standards of the European Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.
Main contractors for the project are a consortium of Black & Veatch and Costain and the project involves a new wastewater treatment works alongside the existing plant at Weatherlees near Sandwich and the upgrading of the existing treatment plants and undersea discharge pipes at Foreness Point in Margate and at North Foreland in Broadstairs.
The three plants will be connected by a series of underground pipelines and once completed, wastewater collected at Foreness and North Foreland will be pumped to Wetherlees where it will receive biological and ultra-violet treatment before being returned to the Margate treatment works for discharge out to sea through the long sea outfall.
Nearly 15km of underground pipelines have been constructed involving both open-cut sections and a tunnel boring machine (named Crystal by a pupil at a local junior school) for the more sensitive locations.
A new storm water discharge pipeline is nearing completion and recently a 'pit'was dug 600m offshore by vessels from Jenkins Marine. Once the boring machine breaks through it is to be retrieved by the Excalibur.
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