Nick Clegg welcomes £24m investment in Sheffield’s drinking water

Sheffield’s drinking water supplies are set to receive a boost as Yorkshire Water begins work on a £24m project to upgrade its Rivelin water treatment works near the South Yorkshire city.

Work involves the construction of a new building in a field to the west of the current works. The new building will house new clarifying settlement tanks, which will act as the first phase of the water treatment process.

Nick Clegg, MP for Sheffield Hallam was at Rivelin this week to break the ground and get the scheme underway.

Mr Clegg commented: “I’m pleased to be involved in this ground breaking ceremony, which signifies the start of this huge investment into improving the quality of drinking water for thousands of residents in Sheffield. It’s great that Yorkshire Water have consulted with so many local organisations and I look forward to returning to see the new underground building when it’s completed.”

Simon Balding, Yorkshire Water project manager, added: “We’re delighted Mr Clegg was here to celebrate the start of this £24m investment with us. Our works is in the beautiful Rivelin Valley and to minimise the impact of the new building on the landscape we’ve consulted and listened to the Rivelin Valley Conservation Group, Sheffield Wildlife Trust, Crosspool Forum and local residents.”

The project will be managed and constructed by Mott MacDonald Bentley and is due to be complete by the end of 2017.

Rivelin water treatment works opened in 1994 and is capable of processing 75 million litres of raw water every day. Yorkshire Water supplies 1.24 billion litres of drinking water each day - equivalent to 49,600 Olympic sized swimming pools full of water and operates more than 40,000 miles of water and sewerage mains – enough pipework to circulate the earth.

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