£450,000 to replace flood-damaged water mains

27 April 2010

Work has started to replace water mains damaged when bridges collapsed and river beds were swept away during the Cumbria floods.

 
Water company United Utilities has launched a £450,000 project to re-lay the pipes in rock deep under river beds - where they will be protected from future deluges.
 
The first scheme to get under way is at Low Lorton, near Cockermouth, where a collapsed bridge cut water supplies to around 50 households at the height of the November floods.
 
At the time, engineers worked tirelessly to restore all water within 48 hours by re-routing supplies along other pipes and laying a temporary over-land main to the hamlet of Rogerscale.
 
Now, a new 700m water main is under construction to replace the temporary pipe. A specialist directional drilling team will lay the new pipe in rock underneath the River Cocker, where it will be naturally protected from future storms.
 
Once complete, the team will move on to replace water mains destroyed by the collapse of two other Cumbrian bridges - at Workington's Northside Bridge and Little Braithwaite Bridge near Keswick - as well at Isel where a water main laid in the river bed was washed away.
 
North Cumbria water asset manager Gareth Earnshaw said despite the scale of the flooding, the water mains network stood up remarkably well at the time.
 
"Despite some initial interruptions, the vast majority of people were reconnected within a couple of hours. Even in remote communities where we had to build temporary mains we managed to restore people quite quickly.
 
"Since then we have been planning how best to replace these mains in such a way as to minimise the risk of this ever happening again. A lot of work has taken place behind the scenes and we now have specialist teams in place to directionally drill right under the river beds where there is rock to help protect the pipes in future," he said.
 
Work at Low Lorton is expected to be complete by mid May. Directional drilling of three other pipes will then take place in the following order: under the mouth of the River Derwent in Workington, under Newlands Beck at Little Braithwaite, under the River Derwent at Isel.
 
Water supplies in Workington are currently being maintained by re-zoning flows along parts of the existing pipeline network. At Little Braithwaite and Isel, a total of two properties are currently being supplied by temporary pipes.
 
All work is expected to be complete by the end of the summer.
 
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United Utilities water technical officer Mark Tyson (left) and network owner Kevin Rudd with the first of two ducts installed in rock under the River Cocker at Low Lorton. When installed, the ducts will carry two new water mains.