Plans to treat contaminated water at Hadlow Down land fill site

UPDATE Oct 29, 2010: Wealden Council says 'No objections'

Contaminated water draining from a closed landfill site at Hadlow Down could be treated there instead of being removed by tanker if a planning application is approved.

The proposal is to build a pre-treatment plant at the site in Stockland Lane. This would allow the treated “leachate” to be pumped via pipelines to a foul sewer.

Details are before Wealden Council but it will be East Sussex County Council which makes the decision.

If approved work would begin either in late November 2010 or in January 2011. It would take about ten weeks and be completed by the end of March 2011.

The landfill site closed in spring 1990 and since then the contaminated water has been removed by tanker and disposed of at a water treatment works.

The county council recently commissioned a feasibility study to investigate leachate management at the site – which is now open grassland - and the planning application follows that.

There would still be a need for water to be removed by tanker in times of heavy rainfall when the volume of water exceeds permissible discharge levels.

The pre-treatment scheme would reduce the methane content of the leachate which discharges and rises at the base of the slope of the closed landfill site.

It would be built at the same location as the existing pumping main, tankering point and flare stack.

Plant equipment would be enclosed in a container and there would be a buffer storage area, containing two tanks no larger than three metres above ground level and 2.5 metres in diameter, a perimeter fence, overflow connection, pumping main, sample chamber/break pressure chamber and gravity connection to the public foul sewer.

The pumping station and valve chamber would be buried. There would also be 560 metres of pumping main following south along Waghorns Lane to join the existing public foul sewer.