Asda is giving Bramley village more than £500,000 to spend on community schemes after a historic fuel leak from its Express forecourt led to the loss of drinking water in the area.
The money is expected to be spent on Christmas lights and the renovation of a children’s playground.
Asda says it takes its responsibilities “incredibly seriously” and is focused on remediation efforts and supporting local businesses and the community.
Asda’s Bramley Business Support Scheme is currently processing applicants with the first payments already having been made. And, recognising the disruption to the 621 households impacted by a loss of drinking water, the supermarket giant will be issuing £50 vouchers to hose households in the coming weeks.
James Barge, senior director corporate affairs and communications at Asda, says: “Asda has been clear in its commitment to Bramley since we took ownership of the site. Our remediation plan is advancing and we are committed to providing regular updates to the community as we progress. Added to that, our Business Support Scheme and Community Support Scheme will support local businesses and create benefits for the wider community over the long term.”
The Asda forecourt in Bramley re-opened in August.
Treatment train
Asda reports that its environmental agency EPS’ approved remedial ‘treatment train’ strategy has been progressing well. The first stage involved using a series of pumps to recover a mixture of groundwater and fuel from beneath the Bramley petrol station and the immediate vicinity for separation and treatment.
“We have successfully reached a point where no more fuel is on the water table in any of our on-site boreholes and this has enabled us to move on to the second stage of the process, which went operational last week. This next stage uses vacuum pumps to extract petrol vapours from the ground and pull fresh air through the affected areas; the extracted air then being cleaned by passing through carbon filters. Early signs are showing this to be very effective,” says a statement.
Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has confirmed that it is satisfied with the progress being made with respect to controlled waters (groundwater and surface water) in line with the agreed roadmaps and positive discussions continue regarding demonstratable and sustainable risk-based end-points for the clean-up work.
A lot of those discussions were based around the results of the groundwater sampling work from over 40 borehole locations which was carried out over the summer to establish the extent of the impact and understanding which directions the groundwater could be flowing.
Asda says the findings of that work have been encouraging, with affected groundwater being quite localised to the northern end of the High Street, but the situation and its impact was seriously complicated by the water table being at a very similar depth as various utilities that run down the High Street. This brought petrol into contact with things like Thames Water pipes and Openreach cable ducts, as well as getting into the road drains which connect directly onto the brook.
Thames Water and EPS installed six access chambers and connecting duct work within the pipe replacement trench as it was backfilled. The ducting feeds back up to the petrol station, where a second remedial system will be located to deliver a very similar treatment system under an extension of current EA permit, combining groundwater pumping and vapour extraction.
Floating petrol
Throughout the summer, EPS drilled additional boreholes in land to the north-east of the High Street and manually recovered any floating petrol that was encountered. Asda says this process was very successful, and the latest monitoring visit confirmed that all floating fuel has been removed from its boreholes. It will continue to monitor the network and take further action where needed.
According to Asda, its groundwater monitoring boreholes do not indicate any high impacts extending to the south of the pipe replacement trench, however petrol has used the gravel backfill around buried utility pipes and ducts to shortcut through the ground. “This is why we consider it important to complete this section of the roadmap with exploratory trenches being opened within the footpath to enable inspection and sampling of the ground immediately surrounding those services and establish what else might need to be done for clean up,” says the Asda statement.
“We have been working with specialist contracts and the council’s Highway department to establish a safe method to undertake this work and currently hope to complete within October. Our collaborative plans will require a section of the footpath to be closed for a few days but importantly, the intention is to avoid any road closures on the High Street.”
