Ridgeway Ground Reed Beds, Throckmorton, Worcestershire

Client: Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
Designer: Unipure Europe Ltd.
Project Manager: Bucknall Austin
Value: £162,000
Date of work: March – May 2007

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Ridgeway Ground is a foot and mouth burial site formed in blue lias clay. To ensure that liquor from the buried animals do not leach into the surrounding ground a series of submersible pumps have been installed which discharge into storage tanks before being regularly tankered away for disposal.

Recognising that this costly procedure could be ongoing for many years, DEFRA commissioned the design of a leachate treatment plant to allow the treated liquor to be purified sufficiently for discharging ultimately into the adjoining water courses.

Our contract consisted of two vertical flow reed beds, two horizontal flow reed beds, a recirculation pumping station, sampling chamber and all associated pipe work and manholes. The contract was valued at £162,000 and was completed between March and May 2007.