'We need answers' Biggleswade Town Council wants water quality testing at sewage works
Tests need to be performed by the Environment Agency to ensure the discharge from an outlet pipe into the River Ivel at Biggleswade has been properly treated, a meeting heard.
Concerns about the water quality flowing into the river from a pipe were raised with Anglian Water by the town council.
Biggleswade’s sewage works is at its capacity and is considered to need upgrading.
BTC’s public realm manager Harry Henderson told town councillors: “I went to the site and there’s a constant flow coming from the outlet into the river.
“I’ve seen no evidence of raw sewage going into the river, but to substantiate that we’d have to get a sample from the outlet source,” he explained. “If you take it from the river, it’s diluted.
“We need it coming directly from the outlet. To do that the access is ridiculous. It’s too dangerous for any of the public realm team to attempt. It needs pruning back to clear the pipe.
“If there was raw sewage going into the river, it clearly would be caught in the weeds and everything around it. I could see the vicinity and there was nothing like that.”
BTC’s head of governance and strategic partnerships Karim Hosseini said: “We’ve had two replies from separate teams within Anglian Water.
“These responses haven’t fully answered our questions. There’s been some progress as recently as this week where we met with another organisation around water purity testing samples.
“The main issue will be access to the actual location of the water outflow pipe, going straight into the river from the sewage treatment plant, as it’s totally overgrown.
“It’s a hazard even to attempt to start cutting things on third party-held land. So we can write to the landowner and Anglian Water to progress this further.”
Town councillor Duncan Strachan noted one of the emails received by the local authority implied an alert was “a false activation”, while a second referred to “the outfall of untreated sewage into the River Ivel”, and warned: “That strikes me as a problem.
“Untreated sewage into the River Ivel is unacceptable. As the water authority, it should be ensuring the water goes in fully treated. It appears they’re saying clearly it went in untreated here.”
Deputy mayor Mark Foster agreed, adding: “You can’t have this both ways. It either is or it isn’t, and we need answers to that question.”
Town councillor Gary Barrett suggested: “I don’t think it’s something we’d take on as a town council to start testing things.
“It’s the Environment Agency we should be reporting this to and then ask it to investigate on our behalf.”
Town clerk Nikki Sewell acknowledged: “If the council wants officers to take samples, there’s a cost element for the kit as it wouldn’t be coming to us free of charge.”
Mayor Jonathan Woodhead confirmed: “We need the Environment Agency to look into this, so we’ll ask the clerk to investigate this further with that organisation.”