Understanding E A rules on waste treatment plant

[joe90]

I have been wading through the envoironment agency rules on discharge from a new package treatment plant that I need to instal soon ( I went for the vortex in the end) and I am confused!!!. My building inspector says discharging to a ditch that is wet for most of the year is ok if a partial soak away is also involved, I also plan a reed bed at the junction with the ditch as part of the partial soak away which my building inspector agrees with. However I can find no definitive rules on this approach. I understand that if I abide by the standing rules I don't need to register but my inspector believes I do need to register????. Just to say we have a high water table, solid yellow clay and little top soil?. Any help gratefully received.

[Jeremy Harris]

I went through much the same process.  As far as the EA are concerned, then the best bet is to just do it online.  There's every chance you'll be asked no questions at all, just issued with a permit to discharge within a couple of hours or so, semi-automatically.  Once you have the permit to discharge that will satisfy building control.

 

In our case I was already engaged in a fairly long debate with the EA about flood risk, which frankly was like pulling teeth.  The flood people in the EA gave me the contact for the permit to discharge, and in complete contrast that was the most painless bit of bureaucracy I had to deal with for the whole build.

 

The rules for discharging to a water course (which can be a field drain or ditch) are that it is automatically permitted (in England and Wales, not Scotland, not sure about NI) as long as the water course flows all year around.  There is no definition of flow, so I would assume that as long as it's wet it's probably OK.  This is the form: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/609905/LIT_6778.pdf  and in my case I was given an email address to send it to, in Exeter, I think.  I can dig out the email address later, once I'm back on my main PC, as it's probably the same for where you are.  They emailed me back the permit within a couple of hours, with no queries.  I got the feeling they treated it as a formality.

Edited August 25, 2017 by JSHarris

[joe90]

Thanks Jeremy, you discharged to a water course but I plan to discharge to a ditch that is only wet 9 or 10 months a year and that is the problem, the ditch runs to drains in the road and after 30 meters or so empties to a water course ( a blue line on ordinance survey maps) the forms only seem to deal with discharge to a water course or drainage field (which our ground conditions   won't allow?). Perhaps I should say discharge to a water course as that's where it eventually ends up ?.?

[Jeremy Harris]

Can you get away with calling the ditch a water course?  My experience is that they don't come and check................

 

If challenged you could always say that every time you've looked at it there has been water in it.

 

I've a feeling that our brook dried up in 1976, as it's fed from a series of springs a mile or so up the valley.  I didn't mention this to the EA, mind.

[joe90]

Just now, JSHarris said:

Can you get away with calling the ditch a water course?  My experience is that they don't come and check................

 

If challenged you could always say that every time you've looked at it there has been water in it.

 

I've a feeling that our brook dried up in 1976, as it's fed from a series of springs a mile or so up the valley.  I didn't mention this to the EA, mind.

Yes,I think that's the way to go Jeremy, I AM discharging to a water course ( via a ditch and drain?)

[ProDave]

Alternatively:They have said you can discharge to the watercourse via a "partial soakaway"  Is not this open ditch your "partial soakaway"?  If it were filled with a perforated pipe and covered, there would be no question.

 

I have gone the "partial soakaway" route as that's what SEPA stipulated. Like you in winter I expect my partial soakaway will act in reverse as a land drain helping to lower the water table, but certainly all summer it has been working and actual discharge from the pipe at the other end into the burn is not very much at all in the summer.

 

Here SEPA wanted to know flow rates of the burn in the summer to work out dilution rates etc.  I guess the partial soakaway does work as it ensures in summer when the flow is lower, so too is the amount of discharge into the burn. In winter if the water table gets high enough that it does become a land drain, then the flow rate in the burn will be very much higher so should still have a good dilution rate.

[joe90]

I just came across this:-

"New discharges are not allowed to a ditch or a surface water that does not contain flowing water throughout the whole year."

and:-

"A partial drainage field (also known as a seasonal soakaway) is a system for discharging to water which allows effluent to drain into the ground when levels in the watercourse are low, and into the watercourse when groundwater levels are high.

If you’re using a partial drainage field for a new discharge, you must install it within 10 metres of the edge of the watercourse and you must only use it with a small sewage treatment plant, not a septic tank."

 

my next question (yawn) is how is this seasonal soak away constructed exactly and what dimensions should I use, is there a guide somewhere as I can't find one.

 

also I need a soak away for the rain water ( the building inspector accepted when I built the garage that if I dug a soak away it would never drain away so allowed me to pipe the rain water via a French drain to ditch) so can I use this same seasonal soak away for rain water or will it back flow into the treatment plant?

[PeterW]

Hutchinsons have a really good website that may help you. They did some stuff for a factory near me that had some challenges.....

 

http://www.hutchinson.co.uk/resources/ea-general-binding-rules

 

 

[ProDave]

My partial soakaway is simply one section of the drain run, that runs parallel to the burn, being made of perforated pipe, and set on a bed of stones before being encased in more stones, covered in plastic and the trench refilled.

 

The theory is, when the ground water table is low, most of what flows in will exit the perforated pipe into the stones and soak down into the ground, leaving very little coming out of the other end to enter the burn.  This indeed is how it seems to be behaving in summer.

 

In winter the water table will rise and the stones will become saturated in standing geound water so nothing more can soak into the ground, so it will all pass straight through and out into the burn, I believe it will actually act as a land drain to stop the water table rising much above the level of that section of pipe.

 

The stipulation here is no part of an infiltration field will be less than 10 metres from a road, or a watercourse, so I have used that only available thin strip in the middle of my plot that meets both those dimensions.

 

It does seem rather logical that one might want to continue with the perforated pipe and partial soakaway right up to where the pipe discharges to the burn, but one is not allowed to have the soakaway less than 10 metres from the edge of the burn. That restriction seems a little bit daft when one has a permit to discharge what is not disperseded to land, into the burn.

 

EDIT: Another difference betweern England and Scotland, is according to the binding rules, a partial soakaway must be within 10 metres of the watercourse, but as I have already mentioned, Scottish building regs prohibit it being within 10 metres of the watercourse. 

[Lesgrandepotato]

Surely if you discharge into it, then it'll be flowing year round... 

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Lesgrandepotato said:

Surely if you discharge into it, then it'll be flowing year round... 

 

 

That's my sort of logic, and frankly, given the high quality of effluent discharged from a treatment plant I can't see there is any environmental problem at all.  The run off from fields will almost certainly have high levels of nitrates, most probably a high biological oxygen demand, together with high concentrations of faecal coliforms (if the field has livestock on it), and may also have residues of pesticides and herbicides, too if it's used for growing crops.  For the EA to try and argue that treatment plant effluent is more harmful than agricultural use would seem not to stand up to detailed scrutiny, and could probably be legally challenged, if push came to shove.

[PeterW]

Oddly it's a very different set of rules. 

 

Faecal coliform from human waste and the same coliform (eColi for example) are classified differently. Whilst it's recognised that the  pathogens are of a similar nature or in some cases identical, as they haven't come from a human source the risk is deemed lower ....

 

work that out..!

[Jeremy Harris]

15 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Oddly it's a very different set of rules. 

 

Faecal coliform from human waste and the same coliform (eColi for example) are classified differently. Whilst it's recognised that the  pathogens are of a similar nature or in some cases identical, as they haven't come from a human source the risk is deemed lower ....

 

work that out..!

 

It is illogical, isn't it?

 

I went through much the same when testing our borehole water.  One concern I had was that there may be faecal coliforms present, because we're surrounded by agricultural land, with much of it pigs (it is Wiltshire, just.....), cattle or sheep grazing. 

 

Clearly there is a significant risk from the tiny number of Escherichia coli strains that have proved pretty harmful to man, but these tend to originate from grazing animal faecal matter, often cattle, so quite why the EA see the risk as greater from treated human waste I don't know.  Add in that a treatment plant is reasonably effective at killing the tiny percentage of pathogenic E. coli strains anyway, and that to be excreting these strains the occupants of the house connected to the system would be pretty ill, and there seems little logic in the rules at all.

[joe90]

Can anyone give me their opinion on this please:-

 

"Also I need a soak away for the rain water ( the building inspector accepted when I built the garage that if I dug a soak away it would never drain away so allowed me to pipe the rain water via a French drain to ditch) so can I use this same seasonal soak away for rain water or will it back flow into the treatment plant?  (Note, the land is very flat and I have very little fall, if any, from the treatment plant to the ditch?.)

 

and, how do I work out how much area / stone I need to provide?

Thanks

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Depends very much on how hot your local authority and building inspector are about run off control.  Ours were paranoid about allowing any surface run off to enter the stream alongside (but were fine with the treatment plant discharging directly into it - go figure, as our US cousins say......).  As a consequence, I had to fit enough storm surge attenuation to ensure that no run off would cross the lane into the stream.  This meant burying twenty 196 litre capacity heavy duty Aquacell crates under the drive and feeding all the rain water drainage to them.

 

There is some guidance in Part H, towards the back, that gives the rainfall for areas of the UK and the associated requirements.  It also details the soakaway requirements, so may be of use.

[Gone West]

It's a postcode lottery. The Highways Dept. and BC were quite happy for me to discharge roof drainage directly onto the lane where it runs into a ditch 100m down the road.

[joe90]

Right chaps, I think a conversation with building control is in order, I will present a plan based on (BS) figures!!! And see what he says, wish me luck.