Overview | |
---|---|
Official name | Lee Tunnel |
Coordinates | 51°31′51″N0°00′03″W / 51.5307°N 0.000835°W |
Status | Open |
Start | Abbey Mills Pumping Station |
End | Beckton Sewage Treatment Works |
Operation | |
Work begun | 2010 |
Constructed | MVB JV consortium |
Opened | 28 January 2016 |
Owner | Thames Water |
Operator | Thames Water |
Technical | |
Length | 6.9 km (4.3 mi) |
Highest elevation | −75 m (−246 ft) at Abbey Mills |
Lowest elevation | −80 m (−260 ft) at Beckton |
Width | 7.2 m (24 ft) |
The Lee Tunnel, also known as the Stratford to East Ham deep tunnel, is an overflow sewer in East London for storage and conveyance of foul sewage mixed with rainwater. It was built as part of the Thames Tideway Scheme and runs from Abbey Mills Pumping Station down to pumps and storage tanks at Jenkins Lane, Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. It is wholly under the London Borough of Newham.
This 6.9 km (4.3 mi) tunnel, of 7.2 m (24 ft) diameter, laid at between 75 m (246 ft) deep, at start, to 80 m (260 ft) at finish, captures c.16,000,000 m3 (1.6×1010 L), or 16 million tonnes, of sewage annually from the single largest polluting CSO in London - the amount varies with rainfall. This sewage overflow had flowed untreated into the River Lea, after which it diluted gradually in the Thames Tideway (the narrowest parts of the Thames Estuary). It can take 30 days for effluent to reach the sea from the Tideway. [1]
From its terminus, pumps send the effluent into the adjacent Beckton Sewage Treatment Works – the largest such works in Europe. From that works the resultant water (treated sewage), with solids removed and the most harmful chemicals treated, empties into the (Thames's) Tideway, its upper estuary. Lying at −75 metres (−246 ft) AOD means a second source of London's old-style combined sewers' effluent can be caught, that from the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is due to open in 2025.
Thames Water awarded the construction contract to the MVB JV consortium, comprising Morgan Sindall, VINCI Construction Grands Projets and Bachy Soletanche, in January 2010. The contract price, combined with Thames Water's own improvements was estimated at £635 million. [2]
Construction began with sinking of vertical shafts in 2010. In February 2012, the TBM, built by Herrenknecht and named Busy Lizzie, started work at the east end. In 2013, a UK record concrete slipform pour was achieved: 29 days of continual pouring. [3] The tunnel is the deepest bored in London. [3] The TBM reached the west end in January 2014. [4] [5] The tunnel was completed, and opened by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, in January 2016. [6]
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette CB was a British civil engineer. As Chief Engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of a sewerage system for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city of cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He later designed Hammersmith Bridge.
The London sewer system is part of the water infrastructure serving London, England. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and as London has grown the system has been expanded. It is currently owned and operated by Thames Water and serves almost all of Greater London.
Beckton is a suburb in east London, England, located 8 miles (12.9 km) east of Charing Cross and part of the London Borough of Newham. Adjacent to the River Thames, the area consisted of unpopulated marshland known as the East Ham Levels in the parishes of Barking, East Ham, West Ham and Woolwich. The development of major industrial infrastructure in the 19th century to support the growing metropolis of London caused an increase in population with housing built in the area for workers of the Beckton Gas Works and Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. The area has a convoluted local government history and has formed part of Greater London since 1965. Between 1981 and 1995 it was within the London Docklands Development Corporation area, which caused the population to increase as new homes were built and the Docklands Light Railway was constructed.
Abbey Mills Pumping Station is a sewage pumping station in Mill Meads, East London, operated by Thames Water. The pumping station lifts sewage from the London sewerage system into the Northern Outfall Sewer and the Lee Tunnel, which both run to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works.
The Northern Outfall Sewer (NOS) is a major gravity sewer which runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works in east London. Most of it was designed by Joseph Bazalgette, as a result of an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and the "Great Stink" of 1858.
The Southern Outfall Sewer is a major sewer taking sewage from the southern area of central London to Crossness in south-east London. Flows from three interceptory sewers combine at a pumping station in Deptford and then run under Greenwich, Woolwich, Plumstead and across Erith marshes. The Outfall Sewer was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and "The Big Stink" of 1858. Work started on the sewer in 1860 and it was finally opened on 4 April 1865 by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel is a 25 km (16 mi) combined sewer running mostly under the tidal section (estuary) of the River Thames across Inner London intended to capture, store and convey almost all the raw sewage and rainwater that currently overflows into the estuary. These events occur when rainfall volumes exceed the capacity of Bazalgette's and other engineers' London sewerage system. The tunnelling phase of the project was completed in April 2022; construction ended in March 2024 ahead of a testing and handover phase expected to conclude in 2025.
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.
Thames Water Utilities Ltd, known as Thames Water, is a British private utility company responsible for the water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshire, far west Kent, and some other parts of England; like other water companies, it has a monopoly in the regions it serves.
A combined sewer is a type of gravity sewer with a system of pipes, tunnels, pump stations etc. to transport sewage and urban runoff together to a sewage treatment plant or disposal site. This means that during rain events, the sewage gets diluted, resulting in higher flowrates at the treatment site. Uncontaminated stormwater simply dilutes sewage, but runoff may dissolve or suspend virtually anything it contacts on roofs, streets, and storage yards. As rainfall travels over roofs and the ground, it may pick up various contaminants including soil particles and other sediment, heavy metals, organic compounds, animal waste, and oil and grease. Combined sewers may also receive dry weather drainage from landscape irrigation, construction dewatering, and washing buildings and sidewalks.
The Tideway is the part of the River Thames in England which is subject to tides. This stretch of water is downstream from Teddington Lock. The Tideway comprises the upper Thames Estuary including the Pool of London.
The utility infrastructure of London, England comprises a range of services and facilities that support and enable the functioning of London as a world city. Infrastructure includes facilities associated with products and materials that are consumed such as electricity, gas, water, heating and liquid fuels; materials that are produced such as sewage and solid waste; and facilities that enable communication and connectivity – telecommunications.
Bovril boats, also known formally as sludge vessels, were specially designed sewage dumping vessels that operated on the River Thames from 1887 to 1998. Their task was to remove London's human solid waste from Beckton and Crossness for disposal on the ebb tide at sea, at Black Deep, an extremely deep part of the North Sea fifteen miles off Foulness, on one of the main approaches to the Thames Estuary. Similar boats operated on the Manchester Ship Canal, the Tyne, and elsewhere.
The Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant is the city of Toronto's main sewage treatment facility, and the second largest such plant in Canada after Montreal's Jean-R. Marcotte facility. One of four plants that service the city of Toronto, it treats the wastewater produced by some 1.4 million of the city's residents and has a rated capacity of 818,000 cubic metres per day. Until 1999 it was officially known as the Main Treatment Plant. The plant has a 185 m (607 ft) high smokestack which is visible from most parts of the city.
The Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works or Beckton Desalination Plant is a desalination plant in Beckton, London, adjacent to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. The plant takes brackish water from the River Thames and converts it into drinkable water through a reverse osmosis process. The first of its kind in the UK, it was built for Thames Water by a consortium of Interserve, Atkins Water and Acciona Agua. It was opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on 2 June 2010. It was planned to provide up to 150 million litres of drinking water each day – enough for 900,000 Londoners. – but by 2023 had only operated on three occasions, and at two-thirds of its planned capacity.
Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, formerly known as Barking Sewage Works, is a large sewage treatment plant in Beckton in the east London Borough of Newham, operated by Thames Water.
Deephams Sewage Treatment Works is a sewage treatment facility close to Picketts Lock, Edmonton, England. The outflow discharges via Pymmes Brook into the River Lee Navigation at Tottenham Lock. The treatment works was upgraded in 2012/13.
Mogden Sewage Treatment Works is a sewage treatment plant in the Ivybridge section of Isleworth, West London, formerly known as Mogden. Built in 1931–36 by Middlesex County Council and now operated by Thames Water, it is the third largest sewage works in the United Kingdom. It treats the waste water from about 1.9 million people served by three main sewers serving more than the northwest quarter of Outer London and two further main sewers from the south and south-west. The plant has been extended and is constantly being upgraded with new process, most recently in OfWat Amp6 by the Costain Atkins Joint venture who delivered 6MW of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) generation, New process air blowers for Batteries A & B and six gravity sludge thickening streams. The site covers 55 hectares.
Greenwich Pumping Station, known until c. 1986 as Deptford Pumping Station, is a sewage pumping station in the London Borough of Greenwich built in 1865 to the east of Deptford Creek. It is part of the London sewerage system devised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the mid 19th century. Today operated by Thames Water, it is located on the western side of Norman Road, approximately 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south west of Greenwich town centre, on the eastern bank of Deptford Creek, around 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south of its confluence with the River Thames.
The Crossness Sewage Treatment Works is a sewage treatment plant located at Crossness in the London Borough of Bexley. It was opened in 1865 and is Europe's second largest sewage treatment works, after its counterpart Beckton Sewage Treatment Works located north of the river. Crossness treats the waste water from the Southern Outfall Sewer serving South and South East London, and is operated by Thames Water.