The Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works or Beckton Desalination Plant is a

desalination Desalination is a process that removes mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination is the removal of salts and minerals from a substance. One example is Soil salinity control, soil desalination. This is important for agric ...

plant in

Beckton Beckton is a suburb in east London, England, located east of Charing Cross and part of the London Borough of Newham. Adjacent to the River Thames, the area consisted of unpopulated marshland known as the East Ham Levels in the parishes of Bark ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, adjacent to

Beckton Sewage Treatment Works Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, formerly known as Barking Sewage Works, is a large sewage treatment plant in Beckton in the east London Borough of Newham, operated by Thames Water. Since construction first began in 1864, the plant has been exte ...

. The plant takes

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...

water from the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, s ...

and converts it into drinkable water through a

reverse osmosis Reverse osmosis (RO) is a water purification process that uses a partially permeable membrane, semi-permeable membrane to separate water molecules from other substances. RO applies pressure to overcome osmotic pressure that favors even distribu ...

process. The first of its kind in the UK, it was built for

Thames Water Thames Water Utilities Limited, trading as Thames Water, is a British private utility company responsible for the water supply and waste water Wastewater (or waste water) is water generated after the use of freshwater, raw water, drinking w ...

by a consortium of

Interserve Interserve was a British construction and support services business based in Reading, Berkshire, which went into administration in 2019 and was formally wound up in 2022. In 2019 the group generated revenue of £2.2 billion and had a workforce ...

, Atkins Water and Acciona Agua. It was opened by

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Philip Mountbatten; 10 June 19219 April 2021), was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he was the consort of the British monarch from h ...

, on 2 June 2010. It was planned to provide up to 150 million litres of drinking water each day – enough for 900,000 Londoners."UK gets first desalination plant"
BBC News, July 18, 2007. – but by 2023 had only operated on three occasions, and at two-thirds of its planned capacity.

Background

Much of the supplied area is classed by the Environment Agency as 'seriously water stressed'. Customers in London, Swindon and Oxford see hose pipe bans during quite minor droughts. The plant is built to treat water from brackish outflows of the

Tideway The Tideway is the part of the River Thames in England which is subject to tides. This stretch of water is downstream from Teddington Lock. The Tideway comprises the upper Thames Estuary including the Pool of London. Tidal activity Depending ...

. Turning this into drinking water is a way to reduce such bans and postpone the risk of severe water rationing into the long term; see the Thames Water Abingdon Reservoir scheme for longer-term supply infrastructure expansion. Section 37 of the

Water Act 2003 The Water Act 2003 (c 37) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The report ''Taking Water Responsibly'', published in March 1999, was a precursor of this Act. Part 1 Section 1 - Licences to abstract water This section came into fo ...

repealed Section 1 of the

Metropolis Water Act 1852 The Metropolis Water Act 1852This short title was conferred on this act bsection 28of this act. ( 15 & 16 Vict. c. 84) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which first introduced regulation of the supply of water to London ("the M ...

. This move ended the ban of the

as a supply of water for drinking, being "no longer required to protect public health" per

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often Hereditary title, hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than ...

and Baroness Byford. Architects Broadway Malyan designed the plan to RIBA Stage D and acted as expert witness at public enquiry.

Facts and figures

The plant was planned to supply 150 million litres of water a day which caters for 400,000 households or 900,000 people in the high-demand seasons when it is most-run. Its supply is pumped to north-east London in an pipe which can hold 14 million litres of water, of 1.2 metre diameter. The peak energy consumption of the plant is 17.6 MW in worst-case conditions, and the average power consumption was estimated at 14 MW, which results in an energy usage of 2.27 kWh per cubic metre of water produced. In 2022, Thames Water revised the usable output of the plant down to 100 megalitres per day, because of "unrealistic expectations" in the design.

Development

The total cost of the scheme including the pipeline was £250 million. The route avoided much disturbance to residents. All construction sites were environmentally screened and the surrounds returned to their original condition. Thames Water had planned to build four more desalination plants, but this has not progressed.

Operation

The plant takes water from the

during the last three hours of ebb, storing the water in a reservoir to minimise the salinity of the water processed. The water is first treated by a conventional

settlement Settlement may refer to: *Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), downward movement of a structure's foundation *Settlement (finance), where securities are delivered against payment of money *Settlement (litigatio ...

and filtration before the salinity is removed by

. Mineral salts, as found in the company's conventional water sources, are added before final purification. The plant is intended to be used during times of low natural water supply and exceptional demand. The operating licence dictates that the plant can only be operated if required by Thames Water's drought management plan, when the river flows at Teddington are less than 3000 megalitres per day. It can also be used in operational emergencies. In 2022, some industry sources said the plant had been effectively mothballed because of high running costs. It was not used in the very dry conditions of summer 2022 because of "necessary planned work". Labelled a "white elephant" by MPs, Beckton has operated just three times since it opened and can only supply two-thirds of its planned 150m litres a day. In 2023, Thames Water said difficulties sourcing the

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

needed to make the water drinkable meant it would be unavailable until July 2023.

Criticism

London Mayor The mayor of London is the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom. The current m ...

Ken Livingstone Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English former politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was Local Government Act 1985, abolished in 1986, and as Mayor of Londo ...

criticised the plant in 2007, calling it a "misguided and a retrograde step in UK environmental policy." Livingstone, arguing that the plant was expensive and unnecessary, said that Thames Water should instead focus on reducing waste caused by leakage and that people should be encouraged "to use less water, not more." Livingstone blocked the plans as “unnecessary and unsustainable”, but it was given approval when

Boris Johnson Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He wa ...

became mayor in 2008.

References

{{Thames Water Desalination plants in the United Kingdom

Desalination Plant Desalination is a process that removes mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination is the removal of salts and minerals from a substance. One example is soil desalination. This is important for agriculture. It is possible ...

Water supply and sanitation in London Beckton