Yorkshire Water is serious about protecting the environment, and our multi-million pound investment programme is helping us to make Yorkshire a cleaner, healthier and more enjoyable place to live.

River water quality is one of the Government's key 'Quality of Life' indicators, as rivers support a variety of wildlife and recreational activity. Our investment will improve over 250 miles of rivers in Yorkshire by 2010.

We’re making sure that the work we do now will have a lasting effect on the environment, meeting not just current legislation but going further to provide a level of treatment which goes over and above the level required by the European Union's directives.

Coastcare Programme

Keeping Yorkshire’s coastal waters clean is no mean feat. That’s why over the last five years, we've invested £120million in a massive programme of work to help make sure that waste water returned to the sea is treated to a standard that exceeds current European legislation.

We’ve come a long way since the days of just having sea outfalls – short pipes which discharged untreated and unclean waste water straight out to sea – and thankfully, reduced the risk of finding sewage and toilet related debris on the beach.

European legislation (The European Waste Water Directive) of the early 1990s required water companies to provide “primary” treatment which would only have involved the removal of sewage debris, condoms and sanitary products before pumping the waste water back into the sea.

We did not feel this would go far enough. So, new state of the art waste water treatment works have been built in Scarborough, Hornsea, Bridlington, Whitby, Filey and Withernsea to provide the required primary treatment but also go two steps further and provide secondary and tertiary treatment. Innovative tertiary treatment is the ultimate clean up stage and involves the use of ultra-violet disinfection which treats the waste water to an exceptionally high standard by removing impurities such as viral bacteria.

But we won’t stop there. Even though we’re not solely responsible for the quality of the regions bathing waters, we’ll continue to do our bit and are committed to working with the local councils and the Environment Agency to further improve the chances of obtaining Blue Flag status for the regions beaches.

Upgrading Yorkshire's Sewer Overflows

Yorkshire Water is working hard to upgrade or replace hundreds of sewer overflows across the region and will spend £90 million before 2010. This work will deliver real benefits for the local environment by improving the quality of local watercourses and coastal bathing waters and encouraging the return of fish and wildlife.

A CSO is an underground structure which diverts waste water into a nearby watercourse and prevents flooding in houses or streets during heavy rain. Our work to upgrade the region’s CSO’s involves installing screens to prevent sewage debris reaching the sea or watercourse, except in extreme weather. In some cases we’re also installing tanks to store most of the excess flows during storm conditions. Once the storm has passed, the tanks then release the flows slowly back into the sewerage system.

Between 2000 and 2005 we upgraded 750 of Yorkshire's 2,000 sewer overflows.  Before 2010 we'll upgrade a further 620, reducing the risk of sewage and toilet-related litter finding it's way into Yorkshire's watercourses.

Freshwater Fish Directive

The Freshwater Fish Directive serves to protect or improve the quality of fresh water, so that it can support fish life. In December 2003 new designations affecting rivers in South and West Yorkshire were established to further improve our rivers.

Yorkshire Water will be investing more than £227 million between 2005 and 2010 to improve around 410km of rivers in Yorkshire. Our work will involve upgrading some of our largest waste water treatment works across the region, including Esholt, which serves Bradford and Knostrop, which serves Leeds. Our work will relate to the reduction of ammonia levels discharged from our works.

If you would like to know more about the Freshwater Fish Directive, you might find the Environment Agency's website of interest.