Minewater Attenuation and Treatment Scheme

In November 2022, the RSC were successful in being awarded a tender for the design and build of Minewater attenuation ponds within the Shire Brook Nature Reserve, to the west of the former Beighton Landfill Site, Sheffield.

On behalf of Sheffield City Council, RSC undertook a phased project to deliver a series of attenuation ponds, filter beds and access tracks for the biological control and treatment of historic run off and treat the mine water-derived selenium to the stream (Shire Brook).

Combining a mixture of civil work and hand work the project produced 3 treatment ponds, stone filter bed and final tertiary treatment through a series of willow hurdles, before discharging to the brook. The 3 stage treatment is designed to collect, filter and refine the effluent before discharging a cleaner discharge into the watercourse.

The scheme is now complete, having been planted up with a number of saplings and water based species including reed beds to assist the treatment process.

The final project includes 3 maintenance tracks and pads for future mechanical de-silting of the ponds to prolong the life of the treatment system.

Sheffield City Council Biodiversity Officer, Angus Hunter commented on the work undertaken by the RSC here at Shire Brook:

"While channel clearance and pollution mitigation is standard fare for the RSC, this kind of habitat work also forms part of a much larger landscape scale national Willow tit recovery project.

Following the Environment Act, this kind of bioremediative work, that stacks multiple ecosystem services and species recovery is going to be in high demand in the forthcoming years, and its great that the RSC is leading on it"

The final stages of the project also gave opportunity for the Riverlution River Stewardship Skills group of trainee river stewards to work alongside the RSC team, Rosie and Jim, which involved planting over 800 wetland plant plugs including water mint, bullrush, and yellow iris.