SWAT team protects water environment

A new piece of technology designed from scratch by Northumbrian Water workers is set to help protect the quality of rivers and watercourses in the North East.

The SWAT (Site Wastewater Analysis Trailer) is a bespoke mobile unit that will be plugged into wastewater treatment works to help give detailed information on the quality of wastewater going into the sites from customers' homes, and back out again into the environment.

The unit conceals a myriad of pipework, which pumps up wastewater from the works and runs it through water analysis software mounted inside.

This gives operators instantaneous results on the incoming wastewater, allowing them to know exactly what is in the sewage and any changes that might need to be made to how it gets treated.

A second SWAT unit will measure the quality of the water coming out at the end of the treatment process to make sure that it is of the highest standard.

It was Northumbrian Water's technical advisor Laura Evans and her team who first had the idea for the SWAT unit over a year ago.

She said: “Ordinarily, an employee would take samples of the wastewater and either analyse the wastewater on site themselves or send it to the labs for testing. This can be time consuming and limited in the information it gives us.

“We've spent the last year working on designing and developing the SWAT trailer to help us improve that process and I'm so proud that we've now got a reallife, working product.”