Essex and Suffolk Water
Essex and Suffolk Water is a water supply company in the United Kingdom. It operates in two geographically distinct areas, one serving parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the other serving parts of Essex and Greater London. The total population served is 1.8 million. Essex and Suffolk is a 'water only' supplier, with sewerage services provided by Anglian Water and Thames Water within its areas of supply. It is part of the Northumbrian Water Group.
History
The South Essex Waterworks Company and the Southend Waterworks Company merged to form the Essex Water Company in 1970. In 1994 the Essex Water Company merged with Suffolk Water Company to form Essex and Suffolk Water. Since 2000 it has been part of Northumbrian Water, but continues to trade under the Essex and Suffolk Water name in the area.Southend Waterworks Company
Southend Waterworks Company was formed by Thomas Brassey in 1865, initially to provide water for the steam engines on the new railway line that opened in 1856, with which Brassey was involved. The company constructed the town's first deep borehole in Milton Road,, along with a reservoir to hold 300,000 gallons. In 1870, Brassey died, and a limited company was formed to take over the works. The company became a statutory undertaker via the '. which restricted the amount of money it could borrow, the profits they could retain and the dividend payable to shareholders, but gave them powers to lay pipes beneath public streets and on private land. The company sunk further boreholes in and around Southend. At Vange a treatment works, with a first of its kind lime recovery plant, was built to soften the water. During 1896, the water supply was tested due to cases of Typhoid fever in the town. The investigation concluded that the water quality was good, but poor sanitation was identified. The town's sewer system was defective and there were discharges onto the beach. The sewer system had been found wanting at a previous investigation in 1890 and since then the town council had been upgrading and improving the sewers. The company's boundaries were extended by the Southend Waterworks Act 1907 to incorporate the areas of both Leigh on Sea Urban District Council and Billericay Rural District Council.By 1924, the company were supplying an area of bounded on the south by the River Thames, on the north by the River Crouch, and stretching westwards to the outskirts of Shenfield. As the volume of water required increased, additional wells were sunk, until there were 36 wells or boreholes in operation. They penetrated a layer of London clay near the surface, and continued into the sands of the Lower London tertiary deposits below that, but the yields obtained were generally poor and gradually diminished over time. In 1921 the company started to look at extracting water from rivers, but failed to obtain parliamentary approval for a joint scheme with the South Essex Waterworks Company to obtain water from the River Stour on the border between Essex and Suffolk. They therefore developed a scheme to extract water from the River Blackwater, the River Chelmer and its tributary, the River Ter. The ' was obtained in August 1924, to enable construction of Langford Works, to the west of Maldon.
The project involved the construction of intakes on the Chelmer and Ter, so that water from either or both could be fed into a concrete pipeline which was in diameter and long. The water flowed by gravity along the pipeline to two sedimentation reservoirs each covering and capable of holding. Water from the Blackwater intake at Langford Mill is pumped to the sedimentation reservoirs. From there the water flows by gravity to the Langford pumping station. In order to maintain the quality of the water, effluent discharged from the Chelmsford sewage treatment works on the Chelmer and the Witham sewage treatment works on the Blackwater was piped to new outfalls below the intakes.
When built, the Langford pumping station contained two triple-expansion steam engines, with room for a third, which was fitted in 1931. There were used in pairs, and each drove a low lift pump to transfer water to the treatment works, and a high lift pump to take treated water and pump it along a cast iron pipe to Southend. The pipe crossed below the River Crouch at Hullbridge, where shafts were built on either side of the river, and a tunnel was constructed between them. The water main is formed of twin steel tubes within the tunnel. The Oakwood storage reservoir was constructed in Bramble Crescent, Hadleigh. This was supplied with water from Langford, firstly by the 28-inch main and later by an additional 32-inch main. Oakwood was the main storage reservoir supplying treated water to Southend by gravity. Additional storage reservoirs were added at Oakwood, increasing the capacity to 17 million gallons. The engines were normally worked in pairs, and a pair could deliver per day. In August 1927, water from the Chelmer started to be used, and between then and 1945, 96 per cent of the water supplied by Southend Waterworks came from Langford. The wells and boreholes were maintained, to provide a backup supply when necessary.
In 1960, work began on replacing the steam engines at Langford pumping station with semi-automatic electric pumps. The project cost £260,000, and was formally inaugurated on 31 October 1963, when Sir George Chaplin, the chairman of Essex County Council, switched on the new pumps. In the late 1960s, construction of a new treatment works next to the storage reservoirs began. The works cost £1.5 million, and were opened on 30 June 1970. They can produce of treated water per day. Earlier that year, the was passed by Parliament, and on 1 April the Southend Waterworks Company amalgamated with the South Essex Waterworks Company to become the Essex Water Company. Negotiations between Maldon District Council, Essex and Suffolk Water and other interested parties in 1996 resulted in the Langford pumping station and its one remaining engine, dating from 1931, becoming the fledgling Museum of Power.
South Essex Waterworks Company
The South Essex Waterworks Company was formed in 1861, and supplied drinking water to an area of stretching from Grays to East Ham and from Brentwood to the River Thames. Water was obtained from boreholes sunk into the chalk aquifer underlying the area, but by the time of the First World War, these supplies were not sufficient to meet the demand for water, and so the company looked further afield. Following the failure of the joint scheme with Southend Waterworks Company, they obtained an act of Parliament in 1928, the South Essex Waterworks Act 1928, for a revised scheme which included a water treatment works at Langham with an intake from the River Stour. Treated water was pumped from the works to Tiptree works, and was pumped from there to a reservoir at Danbury. It then flowed by gravity to another storage reservoir at Herongate and then into the distribution network. One condition of the act was that the company had to supply water to other local authorities which were outside their original supply area.Although the Langham works could supply per day, and came online in 1932, they estimated that they would still be facing a shortage by the end of the decade. The company obtained another act of Parliament, the South Essex Waterworks Act 1935, for a second abstraction point on the Stour. This was located at Stratford St. Mary, about downstream from the Langham intake. A pumping station pumped up to of water per day to the new Abberton Reservoir, and a new treatment works was built at Layer de la Haye near its northern shore. Treated water was pumped to Tiptree, where it was blended with water from Langham. The pipeline from Stratford St. Mary was long, while Abberton Reservoir covers an area of and lies in the valley of the Layer Brook. When full, it could hold. Layer treatment works could process per day, and the system was designed to store water from winter rainfall for use in the summer months.
Construction of the reservoir began in March 1936 and continued until the start of the Second World War in 1939. To pass under the River Colne, shafts were constructed on either side of the river, and a diameter tunnel was excavated between the shafts. The miners worked in compressed air, and twin pipes of diameter were run through the tunnel. The original pipeline consisted of bitumen-lined steel tubes, some and some in diameter. A second pipeline of diameter pipes was subsequently installed. Filling of the reservoir began in 1939 and was completed by the end of 1940. Some minor commissioning work, including the Abberton pumping station, was delayed until the end of hostilities. The project cost £500,000. Many of the construction workers came from Durham, and some stayed on to run the works, including Stanley Aldridge, who had been the engineer, and became the general manager of the Layer works.
Joint projects
Although the Southend Waterworks Company and the South Essex Waterworks Company did not formally unite until 1970, they co-operated on two major projects prior to that date. These were the construction of Hanningfield Reservoir and the Ely-Ouse to Essex Transfer Scheme.The construction of Hanningfield Reservoir, which was authorised by the Hanningfield Water Order 1950, and began in 1951, was a joint venture between the two companies. It was built in the Sandon Valley, to the north of Wickford, and covered the hamlet of Peasdown. A mass earth dam with a puddle clay core was built across the north-east edge of the site, and a new pipeline was built from the Langford pumping station to supply the reservoir. The main contractors for the project were W&C French, and it took around five years to complete, with the treatment works beginning production in August 1956. The formal opening took place over a year later, when Henry Brooke, MP, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, performed the ceremony in September 1957. The total cost of the project was £6 million, and when full, the reservoir can hold. If supplies around of treated water per day, although the maximum throughput of the works is per day. Water levels fluctuate seasonally, and during the winter months, up to per day are pumped into the reservoir via the Langford pipeline.
In order to meet the rising demands for water faced by both companies, the next major project was the Ely-Ouse to Essex Transfer Scheme. Surplus water in the River Great Ouse, which would otherwise flow into the sea, was to be diverted via a series of channels, tunnels and pipelines to augment supplies to the Abberton and Hanningfield reservoirs. At the northern end, the Cut Off Channel carries the headwaters of the River Lark, the River Little Ouse and the River Wissey to the Great Ouse at Denver Sluice, when those rivers are in flood. An intake was constructed at Blackdyke, close to the Little Ouse, and a tunnel carries the water to a pumping station at Kennett. From there a pipeline carries the water to Kirtling Green Outfall, where it enters Kirtling Brook, a tributary of the River Stour. Further down the Stour, some of the water is removed from the river by Wixoe pumping station. A diameter pipeline carries it to the Great Sampford outfall, where it is discharged into the River Pant, the name of the upper reaches of the River Blackwater. Construction of the scheme was completed in 1971.