This Valentine’s Day, owners and operators of reed beds should commit to showing them some love for commercial, environmental, and reputational reasons.
Tag: reed bed maintenance
Improving treatment processes through desludging settlement lagoons
The situation
Oren Environmental operates and maintains many water treatment schemes across the UK for customers, manages reed beds, and undertakes large-scale desludging projects for various commercial organisations.
As industry leaders in our sector, our customer asked us to desludge two settlement lagoons at their water treatment scheme.
Severn questions with Billy Hurst from Oren Environmental
Billy Hurst is a construction supervisor for Oren Environmental. He began working for the company over five years ago and has worked on over 80 reed beds.
He describes his role, how he came to work for Oren Environmental, and why reed bed maintenance is essential.
Why are reed beds often built and forgotten?
A reed bed is a nature-based solution for treating water. It can be used in the final stage of the wastewater treatment process, ensuring water is ‘polished’ before being discharged into watercourses and the wider environment.
However, a reed bed system can often be neglected despite its essential role, leading to suboptimal performance and potentially harmful environmental consequences. But why does this happen?
We spoke to Ross Brown, Sales Manager at Oren Environmental, who explained why reed beds are often built and forgotten.
5 ways we take a sustainable approach to our reed bed work
We understand the crucial role a well-maintained reed bed can play in water treatment. We also acknowledge that reed beds are valuable ecosystems that provide a habitat for various plant and animal species.
That’s why maintaining them requires a sustainable approach, too, to ensure their health and effectiveness while enhancing their environmental performance. Here are five examples of sustainable practices we use to manage and maintain reed beds, which often challenge traditional methods offered within our industry.
7 reasons why reed bed maintenance is essential
Reed beds are natural filtration systems crucial for conserving water quality. However, like any other wastewater asset, they must be regularly looked after to do their job correctly.
Unfortunately, reed beds are often neglected until a problem occurs, such as a pollution incident.
Alastair Pentland, Environmental Operations Manager at Oren Environmental, has outlined the seven reasons why routine reed bed maintenance is essential.
The multifaceted role of a reed bed and why maintenance is key
It’s important to remember that regular maintenance is crucial for any reed bed to work – whether it’s a natural or engineered reed bed. This is because reed beds play a critical role in the water treatment process.
The Oren Environmental team is on a mission to help educate the industry about the importance of taking care of reed beds and the benefits that come from looking after them.
Alastair Pentland, Environmental Operations Manager at Oren Environmental, said:
“I think that because reed beds are situated in the natural environment, they can often be overlooked and their role underestimated. Not only do they prevent water courses from pollution, but they also provide a home to countless plants and species.”
