Black & Veatch is about to start work on a major £16 million upgrade of the Muirdykes water treatment works in Renfrewshire for Scottish Water.

The water company is investing £16 million in improvements at the Muirdykes Water Treatment Works (WTW), which provides water for homes and businesses in Renfrewshire, including Johnstone, Howwood, Linwood, Elderslie, Kilbarchan, Quarrelton, Craigend and parts of the south of Paisley such as Glenburn and Foxbar.

The upgrade will involve the installation of a new filtration building and process at the WTW near Howwood and will reduce the risk in the network of discoloured water caused by naturally-occurring manganese.

Scottish Water invested £4 million in improvements to more than 100 miles of water mains affected by discoloured water in Renfrewshire two years ago and installed a cutting edge piece of equipment called a Wears Resmix system at Barcraigs reservoir near Howwood in 2012.

Iain McMillan, Scottish Water’s senior project manager, said:

“These improvements in the past three years have helped to tackle the problem of manganese and discoloured water in the Muirdykes WTW supply zone.

“However, this major investment at the WTW, and the installation of a new filtration process, will improve the robustness of our system and further reduce the risk of manganese and discoloured water in the longer-term.”

“While we cannot guarantee there will be no recurrence of manganese and discoloured water in the Muirdykes network, our upgrade of the WTW will substantially reduce the risk and we know the investment will be welcomed by our customers in Renfrewshire.”

The new secondary stage filtration process will remove oxydised manganese from the system before it goes into the supply zone and will be housed in a single-storey building to be constructed on the site of the Muirdykes WTW.

Scottish Water has given an undertaking to the Drinking Water Quality Regulator to provide an effective manganese removal system for this area.

The upgrade of the WTW, which will be carried out for Scottish Water by contractors Black & Veatch, is to start on about September 1 and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2017.