Flintshire in the north-east of Wales covers 169 square miles, with a population of 155,000. The Dee Estuary flows along its North East side while the South west of the county forms part of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Over the next five years, we will be focusing on investing for the future and our investment programme for Flintshire will be looking to improve resilience in our drinking water network by replacing water pipes in areas which have been impacted by supply issues, as well as protecting and improving the environment by focusing our efforts on our wastewater treatment sites.
Every five years we prepare a regulatory business plan which is submitted to Ofwat as part of the Price Review process. The plans are based on customer views and cover our performance commitments, efficiency, investments, and bills. Below are some examples of the work carried out in your area during the previous investment period 2020-2025.
In October 2023 we completed a £2million project to decommission 2 reservoirs in Cilcain to return the area to its natural landscape as part of the Nanin Gain river. As the reservoirs are no longer part of the drinking water network, it was decided to restore the area to its original form. Working with our Capital Partners Envolve, the team worked closely with our environmental specialist team to deliver improvements to improve biodiversity in the area, allowing wildlife to flourish.
As well as delivering the scheme, the team on site carried out a number of community benefits including donations of surplus materials, visiting the local primary school to deliver an engineering and water cycle workshop as well as welcoming the school to site when the work was completed. The team also donated materials and a bridge from the site to a local community garden group and spent the day volunteering at the gardens. A number of local groups have also benefited from our Community Fund while work was being carried out in the area.
We invested £6.8 million to install two new water pipes under the River Dee in Connah’s Quay to ensure thousands of customers and major businesses in the area have a reliable water supply for decades to come.
Using innovative technology, two 800m long pipes have been installed under the River Dee between Shotton Steelworks and Dock Road in Connah’s Quay. The project also brought back unused parts of the water network to help improve the resilience of the water supply in the area. Work started on site in April 2022 and was completed in April 2023.
We invested over £2 million to lay a new waste rising main pipe to protect the environment and improve the wastewater network for customers in Bretton and Saltney. Nearly 2km of new sewer was laid from the pumping station in Bretton to Saltney village where it connected into the existing waste network.
Various methods were used to lay the pipe to minimise disruption to residents, businesses, and motorists, including state of the art drilling technology to tunnel under a busy road to lay the new pipe to avoid disruption to traffic in the area.