By Lynda Myer
As part of Yorkshire Water’s project, which is building a new sewer in the town to decrease storm overflows into the River Wharfe, the Ward & Burke contractor has completed the second length of sewer tunneling beneath the A65 in Ilkley, West Yorkshire for Yorkshire Water.
In order to excavating a tunnel under the road between Ashlands playing fields and Ilkley Wharfe View car park, Ward & Burke with collaboration of designer Stantec, opted for trenchless technology.
Remote tunneling equipment, named Diggy by children at Ashlands Primary School, completed the 600m sewer and has been retrieved and removed from site. The completion takes the total tunnelled by Diggy to 835m.
The location of this remotely controlled trenchless system is 5-8m beneath the surface, while laying new pipework behind it. Also, during operation of the microtuneling machine, it sent soil back to the staging site, where it was cleaned and recycled for use in other projects in the area and causes not banding the road by the project team while the pipework was being laid.
Additionally, while a smaller tunneling machine, nicknamed Diggy Junior, will commence work on the third tunnel, an extension of the original project that will see it dig from Wharf Street car park to the riverbank off Castle Road, the scheduled date for starting the work on the third tunnel is 25 September for approximately four weeks.
The project is expected to be completed in January 2024.
According to Yorkshire Water director of wastewater Ben Roche: “This new sewer will accommodate higher flows of wastewater during periods of heavy and prolonged rainfall and will ultimately reduce the number and volume of discharges into the River Wharfe from our network. We’ve been working underneath Ilkley since April and have some final work to do in the coming weeks to fully commission the new sewer and enable it to start receiving Ilkley’s wastewater.”
He also added: “Our attention will now turn to the final tunnel. The decision was taken to bring forward investment to complete this final section while we already have the equipment in place in the area. While the extension will be constructed now, it will not become operational until 2026 as additional upgrades are required on our network to enable it to function as designed. These will be carried out in the coming years and the extension tunnel will become operational in 2026.”
Roche emphasized that throughout the project the team has worked hard to keep disruption to an absolute minimum.
“Using trenchless technology and tunneling equipment controlled remotely has enabled the sewer to be laid underneath Ilkley without the need to dig up a busy road through the town. It is important all stakeholders come together to improve water quality in the River Wharfe. We’re playing our part through this project and are planning further enhancements to our network in the area in the coming years,” he said.
