THE River Irwell runs bright orange in Bacup - for three decades to people in Rossendale this was merely a fact of life.

While the river was home to wildlife from Stubbins to Waterfoot and environmental improvements and restocking of fish attracted visitors to Groundwork Rossendale - in Bacup the Irwell was orange.

In 1997 a survey by the Coal Authority identified a stretch of the Irwell as the fourth worst case of minewater pollution in the country and a clean up scheme was devised. Minewater from the former Old Meadows Colliery, off Burnley Road, Broadclough, Bacup, which was last worked in the 1970s, affected 24km of the river bed and the water quality of some 5km was also affected.

The minewater flow of 50 litres per second contains 37 milligrams per litre of dissolved iron salts and the resulting ochre staining of the river bed had a significant impact.

A major engineering scheme had to be devised costing nearly £1million but the only land available was a site of three hectares of privately-owned agricultural land. Consultant engineers IMC designed the scheme and Thyssen Construction carried out the civil works. Performing the official opening ceremony Tourism Minister and Rossendale and Darwen MP Janet Anderson said: "I would like to say thanks to the Coal Authority for what has been done for Rossendale and for the River Irwell."

Bacup Coun Michael McShea said: "The effect it has had on the quality of the water is already showing itself and I am highly delighted.

"It is unbelievable that the treatment works have had such an effect in the short time that they have been in operation.

"Already I have seen ducks and dippers and although I haven't seen any fish yet you can see the colour of the gravel and a lot of the residue has been washed away.

"Hopefully we can soon be restock with fish and maybe get a scheme together involving the Environment Agency and the Mersey Basin Campaign."

Neighbours of the scheme Robert and Barbara Morley visited the site for the official opening and declared it "wonderful".

Barabra said: "Wildlife is returning to the river and I saw a heron which will hopefully come back and stay now.

"My children have grown up here for the last 20 years and they have only ever known the river to be bright orange." From Burnley Road all that can be seen is a new stone building which houses a pumping station, mesh bales filled with stones to hold back the steep slope of the hillside, a new access road and the bus shelter which was moved to make way for the development. Affected water is now transferred straight from the mine adit to the pumping station then pumped to the top of the hill where there is a caustic soda dosing plant to correct the water quality.

It is then transferred to two sedimentation ponds which are sealed with clay to minimise seepage.

Treated effluent finally flows into a wetland reed bed measuring 2,200 square metres to retain any fine iron solids on the plants and leaf litter.

Final discharge into the Irwell should be less than 1 milligram of iron per litre.

Work began in March last year and was completed in spring after delays caused by bad weather.

A Coal Authority spokesman said: "Old Meadows is the largest project we have been solely responsible for although we were a partner in a larger scheme.

"It is our Rolls-Royce because of the scale of the problem. It was such steep slope we had to come up with a novel method to site the treatment works in such an awkward location."

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