Huge water investment will prove no pipe dream
An ambitious £ 120m investment in Ayrshire’s drinking water is set to link rural taps to the city.
The move, which will boost up to 200,000 people and businesses in the region, is being rolled out by utility giant Scottish Water.
The second phase of the upgrade is ready to get underway, which will see more than 30 miles of new water mains connecting the system in Ayrshire with the Greater Glasgow area’s network.
Customers across a large part of Ayrshire currently receive their water from a single source just south of Straiton at the Bradan Water Treatment Works.
The water, supplied to customers’ taps via a 34- mile- long trunk water main, was installed 50 years ago and runs to a point north of Irvine.
But the company says construction of its new “strategic water main,” will connect Ayrshire to the network served by the Milngavie and Balmore water treatment works, north of Glasgow.
Construction is expected to be complete by 2020.
Bosses say the investment will enable the transfer of water between Ayrshire and Glasgow.
It follows phase one of the work which saw the construction of a 13 mile- long main between Newton Mearns and Fenwick.
Phase two will see another 13 mile main installed south of Fenwick to the Highlees Pumping Station near Dundonald.
The work, which will include the construction of a pumping station near the Grassyards interchange at Ralstonhill east of Kilmarnock, is expected to be completed in about 20 months.
Stewart Davis, Scottish Water’s programme manager, said: “This is a massive investment in improvements to the water main infrastructure by connecting the system in Ayrshire with Glasgow’s network and we are having to do it in several key phases.
“We are delighted to be in the final stages of the first phase, which involved some challenging work in difficult conditions, and we have now moved on to preparator work for the start of the second phase with the first stretches of pipes due to be installed very soon.
“People may already have seen activity south of Amlaird at the north end of the second phase and this will increase as we move into full construction mode.”
The pipes, brought in by sea from Turkey, are made up of 900mm steel with a polyethylene external coating and an epoxy internal lining, and will be installed in 13.2m long sections.
Work is being carried out by the Caledonia Water Alliance ( CWA).