Thames Water Desalination Plant

The Thames Water Desalination Plant or Beckton Desalination Plant is a desalination plant in Beckton, London.[1] The first of its kind in the UK, it was built for Thames Water by a consortium of Interserve, Atkins Water and Acciona Agua.[2] It was opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh on 2 June 2010.[3] It can provide up to 150 million litres of drinking water each day – enough for 900,000 Londoners.[4][5][6]

Background

Much of the supplied area is classed by the Environment Agency as 'seriously water stressed'. Customers in London, Swindon and Oxford see hose pipe bans during quite minor droughts. The plant is built to treat water from brackish outflows of the Tideway. Turning this into drinking water is a way to reduce such bans and postpone the risk of severe water rationing into the long term; see the Thames Water Abingdon Reservoir scheme for longer term supply infrastructure expansion.[7][8]

Section 37 of the Water Act 2003 replealed Section 1 of the Metropolis Water Act 1852. This move ended the ban of the Tideway as a supply of water for drinking, being "no longer required to protect public health" per Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton and Baroness Byford.[9]

Architects Broadway Malyan designed the plan to RIBA Stage D and acted as expert witness at public enquiry.

Facts and figures

The plant can supply 150 million litres of water a day which caters for 400,000 households or 900,000 people in the high-demand seasons when it is most-run. It runs on renewable energy. Its supply is pumped from Beckton to North East London in an 8-mile (13 km) pipe which can hold 14 million litres of water, of 1.2 metre diameter.[7]

Development

The total cost of the scheme including the pipeline was £250 million. The route avoided much disturbance to residents. All construction sites were environmentally screened and the surrounds returned to their original condition.[7]

Operation

The plant takes water from the Tideway during the last three hours of ebb. This is first treated by a conventional settlement and filtration before the salinity is removed by reverse osmosis. Mineral salts, as found in the company's conventional water sources, are added before final purification.[10]

The plant is used during times of low natural water supply, exceptional demand and can be run as a contingency to other works if these face any incident such as leak or quality failure.

Criticism

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone criticised the plant in 2007, calling it a "misguided and a retrograde step in UK environmental policy." Livingstone, arguing that the plant was expensive and unnecessary, said that Thames Water should instead focus on reducing waste caused by leakage and that people should be encouraged "to use less water, not more."[11]

References
  1. Thames Water Desalination Plant: water-technology.net
  2. Interserve group to build £200m Thames Gateway water scheme Building Magazine 9 July 2009 Retrieved 2 April 2013
  3. "Salt water plant opened in London". BBC News. 2 June 2010. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  4. Thames Water website - Then and now
  5. "UK gets first desalination plant", BBC News, July 18, 2007.
  6. https://londonist.com/2015/10/london-s-desalination-plant
  7. "How the treatment works operates". Thames Water. Retrieved 22 June 2014.
  8. Scott, M. (2012). "Increasing population and the environment: How do the numbers stack up?". Significance. 9: 8. doi:10.1111/j.1740-9713.2012.00536.x.
  9. "Efficient Use of Water Resources". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Lords. June 24, 2003. col. 276.
  10. "How the treatment works operates". www.thameswater.co.uk. Thames Water.
  11. "Mayor critical of government plans to approve desalination plant" Archived 2008-05-07 at the Wayback Machine, Greater London Authority press release, June 15, 2007.

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