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30
Jun
Environment Agency explains why Crimple Beck ran bright green
Residents of Pannal in Harrogate were alarmed yesterday (Monday, June 29) to see Crimple Beck running bright green.
The vivid colouring appeared to be coming from an outflow joining the beck near the road bridge on Main Street.
Speculation as to the cause ranged from the frivolous – a Saint Patrick’s Day stunt running three months late – to the catastrophic: an ecological disastrous industrial chemical spill.
But the truth turned out to be rather more mundane. According to the Environment Agency, the colouring comes from fluorescein dye, an organic compound commonly used by plumbers, environmental regulators and sanitation engineers to trace connections to watercourses.
The dye was widely mistaken for harmful pollution. Photos: Susan Snee.
The bright green colour was reported to the Environment Agency by Susan Snee, who lives nearby. She said:
My dog regularly swims in this stream a little further down, so I was worried. I thought it was paint or something from a car engine. Other people were standing on the bridge, saying ‘what on earth’s going on?’.
'No concerns'
But Mike Hales, the agency’s environment management duty officer for North and East Yorkshire, explained what the cause was, and added:
At the concentration used in dye-testing, it is safe to wildlife. No concerns from my perspective.
The dye dissipates and breaks down naturally. Photo: Susan Snee.
That will have come as a relief to Pannal residents, including Ms Snee, but she still thinks they should have been told beforehand. She said:
We’re all a bit ‘twitched’ in Pannal, because of how Yorkshire Water behaved with the sewage pipe coming through. You’d expect them to warn residents before doing something like this. It’s just really poor communication.
Sewerage misconnections
It is not yet known who was using the dye, or why exactly. The Stray Ferret has asked Yorkshire Water about it, as the utility company is known to use dye to identify sewerage misconnections.
Road and surface water runs into gutters and gullies which flow into nearby watercourses, including Crimple Beck, but household wastewater is supposed to flow into a different sewerage system, which leads to a sewage treatment plant.
But sometimes, a property’s wastewater system is mistakenly plumbed into the surface water drainage system, meaning that all the waste from its sinks, showers and even toilets flow directly into the nearest beck.
This has been a major contributor toPollution of River Ure described as 'small-scale environmental disaster' pollution in local watercourses and Yorkshire Water is undertaking a major programme to identify these misconnections and tackle them.
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