A main road near the centre of Keynsham is to be closed completely for almost three months this summer, to allow a new sewer to be installed. A 170-metre stretch of the B3116 Wellsway near Keynsham Cricket Club will be closed from the last week of July for 12 weeks.
Motorists driving through Keynsham will be diverted on the A39 and A4, but residents in Chandag Road and surrounding streets are bracing themselves for the inevitable rat-running drivers trying to avoid the road closure. Wessex Water said the work will begin on July 24, and see a new gravity relief sewer installed along the 170-metre stretch of the Wellsway, to connect two separate systems to try to reduce incidents where the sewers flood nearby streets and homes.
The work will cost half a million pounds, and is part of a much bigger project to expand the capacity of Keynsham’s sewage system, as the town expands. Along with the £500,000 to install the new sewer on the Wellsway, a total of £16.5 million is being spent by Wessex Water on the water recycling centre off Broadmead Lane, just north of the railway line, close to the town centre.
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There, the site is being expanded, to allow further infrastructure to be added. “This is a significant boost to our wastewater systems in Keynsham that demonstrates both our determination to tackle specific flooding issues being faced locally and ensuring we can continue to safely treat the inevitable increase in sewage from a growing population,” Wessex Water’s director of engineering and delivery, Paul Lewis, said.
“We’ve worked hard to find the best way to try and reduce the historical issues with flooding in the residential neighbourhood around Wellsway and the new relief sewer is the most effective and sensible solution to protect the environment.
“Meanwhile, the massive investment in the town’s water recycling centre will help ensure it can meet the increasing demands and deliver the added storage needed to prevent untreated water being released back into the environment,” he added.
Project manager Kelvin Brick said: “The refurbishment will also further protect the environment by increasing the site’s capacity to store diluted storm water from combined sewer pipes carrying both rainwater and foul sewage following intense rainfall. This will help to reduce instances of storm overflows releasing such untreated water back into the environment automatically,” he added.
While the work at Broadmead Lane won’t have too much impact on residents of Keynsham, closing the main road into the town from the south will be a major issue for drivers in and around the town, and council highways chiefs told Wessex Water not to start the work until the start of the school holidays - although it is scheduled to run to the middle of October.
“We have met with councils in both Keynsham and Saltford to better understand the impact this road closure will have and ensure the appropriate measures are in place to direct traffic on to the diversion route,” said project manager Alex Aulds. “We are also writing to residents, schools and businesses locally to make them aware of the project and working closely with Keynsham Cricket Club, near to the site of the project, to reduce the impact as much as possible,” he added.
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