Since the last Trustees meeting there have been a number of initiatives put in train and ongoing research has been frenetic.
New Schemes.
1/ The Warwickshire Coal Field has been a target to develop heat from flooded coal workings. Several meetings have been held and a funding bid to DECC has been put forward for initial scoping study of North Warwickshire by the local authority. The Trust is to carry forward the research if the funding is granted.
2a/ Daw Mill in North Warwickshire is being considered separately to become a standalone project with the owners of the old colliery site. As an industrial redevelopment site in the centre of greenbelt is a unique factor in any redevelopment and it is desirable that it demonstrates sustainable principles across the board; in end user, design and delivery.
2b/ The closed colliery site at Ellington, Northumberland is being considered as a possible demonstration of minewater heat technology. The old mine site is scheduled for redevelopment but some issues that are against it so Harworth and the Trust with the involvement and help of both Northumbria County Council and the Coal Authority. The Coal Authority are about to commission a new minewater treatment plant alongside Harworth Estates land holding, the water from which might be a suitable heat source for the benefit of the Ellington Colliery site redevelopment.
3/ New projects have been flagged up by a major UK international engineering consultancy with regard to South Africa and Uganda. Both would utilise our specialist expertise in waste waters and local knowledge and contacts. Both projects would benefit from our involvement.
4/ The Trust’s developing involvement in Puntland, one of the two breakaway regions in the northern part of Somalia, would involve our hydrological and waste water specialties. There are no solid project outlines to go on at present regarding timings or exact locations but our knowledge base on the area is broad. There are a number of methodologies that can both limit disease and benefit the natural environment at the same time which the Trust has expertise in placing when the time comes.
5/ GOYA = a possible link between the NHS/Department of Health and the Trust regarding walking. It stands for get off your arse – a rather ‘hip hop’ title for a walking movement to survey the wellbeing of rivers and streams. It needs a lot of work! And some thought.
Current Research.
1/ Wetland and wildlife monitoring is continuing; it being a pleasure to relay that all the monitoring sites have demonstrated remarkable developments in higher insect community development, alongside that of burgeoning populations of migratory adult birds returning to the sites. A first for these sites is a bitten appearing irregularly at the wetland in Kent. There is a possibility that this monitoring can be expanded to other sites in Derbyshire and South West Yorkshire.
This site is not where one would ever hope to see this bird, considered too small, but it appears to have found that amphibians have taken up residence and is consuming a proportion of the population, possibly including Great Crested Newts.
2/ Research on wetlands at the Trust have shown interesting developments with the use of carp that are thriving and eradicating early algal blooms in one of our test beds that is treating high zinc loadings. The Trust is also experimenting on simple solar water pumps to aid wetland attenuation of high levels of arsenic. Other trials continuing include cadmium, chrome 3 (common and difficult to remove from tannery wastes) and other substances.
One set of trials to be considered shortly is waste from precious metal extraction, cyanides and mercury both commonly used for the breaking down of host rock in leach heaps. Such methods are being used within the EU, Africa and elsewhere.
3/ The work on the problems of estrogenic compounds in waste water treatment works is now joined by other pharmaceuticals including anti-depressants. These compounds have been shown to change breading habits and have the effect of increasing aggression in some fresh water crabs and other crustaceans.
4/ The web site now has the document on the ins and outs of the shale gas and oil issues; the Trust is doing its best to publicise the document as an unbiased piece of reportage.
5/ A new landfill project in South Yorkshire has been concluded. It involves the historic use of an old railway cutting on the cusp between the Don and Trent river catchments. The location leads to some interesting hydrological issues.
6/ The issue of flooding of agricultural land in the Somerset levels is leading to some interesting issues of trace minerals leaching from soils. This is under the circumstances not unusual but that they historically would have been replaced by silts laying down replacements at the end of inundation. These coming from the higher surrounding landforms such as the Mendip Hills. There appear to be issues with regard to even historic flood protection methods that have been starving the land of essential minerals over several centuries, which has only now started to come to the attention of interested parties. This research links to work the Trust carried out in 1996/97 and the effects of draught on mineral loadings from parts of Derbyshire identified by Anglia Water in their research on the Derbyshire reservoirs. This identified high loadings of bromine, common in the Derwent Valley geology, but not in the water.
Derwent Valley, Derbyshire.
House Keeping.
Paid consultancy continues with the completion of a research project for Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council.
Lawrence has arranged payment for the Kent Groundwater Project from the reluctant commissioner.
The Trust is undertaking a fundraising drive at the moment (as is usual), initial responses are on the high end of what one can normally expect, with luck this might continue.
At the end of this calendar year the Trust will be celebrating its 25th anniversary; ideas please. Though not me being put out to grass!
Other Issues of Note.
The Trust published a piece on the current effects of poison gas (remnants from World War One) on the water environments of Northern France and Flanders on the web site earlier this year. It was reported a few weeks later of 3 deaths occurring from mustard gas munitions leaking on a building site near Ypres, there has been another fatality in Verdun from a similar source.