Upgrades to a UK wastewater treatment works will help improve water quality in the River Sheppey, which runs through the town of Shepton Mallet.

More than £15 million is being invested in the water recycling centre serving the Somerset market town, ensuring that the way sewage is treated will continue to meet rigorous environmental standards. Much of the work will focus on advanced methods to remove more pollutants like ammonia and phosphorus, which are often found in wastewater and can affect the health of rivers.

Project manager Hannah Sweeney said, “Reducing the presence of these nutrients in the sewage arriving at our water recycling centres is one of the biggest challenges Wessex Water is stepping up to meet. They can be found in agricultural fertilisers, farm slurries, septic tank discharges, as well as domestic wastewater, and can cause large growths of algae in streams and rivers, which can damage plants and animals by depleting the amount of oxygen in the water – a process known as eutrophication.

“In improving the processes for removing them at our Shepton Mallet site, we’ll make sure our treatment continues to meet the high standards set by the Environment Agency and improve the condition of the River Sheppey. By the end of this year we’ll have upgraded existing equipment and installed new processes to ensure sewage from the local community continues to be safely treated.’’

Population growth

Building enhanced treatment capacity will also meet the demands of the expected growth of the local population over the next two decades. The refurbishment is part of more than £400 million being invested by Wessex Water to upgrade water recycling centres throughout its region by the end of next year.

The Shepton Mallet site also serves the nearby villages of Bowlish, Darshill, Doulting and Downside and a number of further treatment units have been added, including biological treatment, additional sludge storage, new controls and upgrading of infrastructure to improve performance in the future. Chemical dosing systems, pump stations and monitoring equipment will also be in place with the refurbishment taking place within the existing boundaries of the centre.

Wessex Water says the work continues the company's push to protect Somerset’s waterways from the impact of nutrients, which has seen a number of projects already underway or planned.