SPECIAL WORKS
Mine Water Treatment relies on borehole loggers
For the last nine years, Severn Trent Services, has managed a contract for mine water treatment across the Coal Authority estate, including 73 mine water treatment schemes in England, Scotland and Wales. These schemes take the form of three types: passive, pumped-passive and active. Water levels are one of the elements monitored closely at these sites, which have approximately 600 monitoring points. The majority of the readings are obtained manually with dip tapes, and by utilising loggers, around 125 of which are OTT ecoLog water level loggers.
At most sites, mine water is pumped to a treatment facility which employs oxygenation, filtration and sedimentation to raise the quality of the water in compliance with discharge consents.
“Mine water from legacy coal mines is treated at many of these sites utilising settlement lagoons and reed beds,” explains Oren Environmental’s Data & Reporting Manager Paul Robinson. “The effective management of these resources is heavily dependent on reliable data including water level measurements, and we have been using OTT instruments to support this since 2016. With the benefit of water level data, we can ensure that the flow of water through the lagoons and reedbeds maximises effective treatment
18 before water is discharged to watercourse.
“One of the additional capabilities of the loggers is to create alarms and this is something we are investigating for future use,” Paul explains.
“In addition to the older ecoLog 500’s and the newer ecoLog 1000’s, we also utilise five ecoLog 800’s to collect and monitor conductivity measurements. Conductivity data can be used to assess the quality of water by identifying minerals etc. that are
| February 2024 |
www.draintraderltd.com present in the water.”
Where the ecoLogs are deployed in surface water weirs, the level measurements are translated into flow, which further informs the management of the treatment process.
Many of the original water level loggers were ecoLog 500 devices, some of which are still in operation. However, these are being gradually replaced by ecoLog 1000 instruments. “The ecoLog 1000 has an extremely advantageous feature,” Paul
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