A massive new scheme with the aim of improving water quality in the Manchester Ship Canal is underway with the help of a new recruit.
Weighing in at 140 tonnes, Gloria is a big girl, and she’s a grafter, she can dig 1,285 wheelbarrows full of dirt every shift!
Gloria is in fact a huge tunnel-boring machine and with a ‘mouth’ more than four metres wide and 80 ‘teeth’, she will make light work of a 700-metre long tunnel through the heart of Trafford Park.
Since August 2013, the site team have been working at three sites in Fraser Place and Europa Way digging shafts and chambers up to 33 metres deep – big enough to swallow an 11-storey block of flats!
The shafts will all be connected by the tunnel, which will be wide enough to drive a high roof van through. The whole system will work together to store 17,800 cubic metres of dirty water during storm conditions, enough to fill more than seven Olympic-sized swimming pools.
This water, which would previously overflow into the Manchester Ship Canal, will then be taken away for treatment after the storm.
David Baines, United Utilities senior project manager, said:
David added: “This part of Trafford was at the heart of Manchester’s industrial development. We’re working on the site of the old Westinghouse factory and later the Vickers factory where the Lancaster bomber was assembled during the war.
“Two of Manchester’s arterial Victorian sewers run through the site on the way to Davyhulme wastewater treatment works. Our project will bring these sewers up to modern standards with enough capacity to meet the demands of the growing city. It’s good news for the area and the fish and wildlife in the ship canal.”
The Trafford Park sewer scheme is one of six similar projects worth more than £90 million being carried out by United Utilities along the Salford and Eccles corridor.
