Potter Group Ely up for top environmental award
A project to turn The Potter Group's Queen Adelaide settling ponds into a wild life haven has been entered for a top environmental award. The company's advisers multi-disciplinary consultancy Mott MacDonald helped guide the project through complex approval and planning procedures and have submitted it for this year's EDIE (Environmental Data Interactive Exchange) Environmental Excellence awards. Now in their fourth year the awards have been recognised as one of the top in Europe after being awarded RSA accreditation in 2009.
Previous winners include the Atomic Energy Authority, the Building Research Establishment, Siemens and W S Atkins, all leaders in their own fields. The 2010 winners will be announced on November 4th at the Hurlingham Club, London.
Darren Tofts, the company's Ely Centre general manager, explained. "After we took the site over from British Sugar in 1981, the ponds gradually became a safe haven for some of the UK's rarest species - including one pair of only 25 breeding pairs of bitterns in the UK - and others including marsh harriers, water voles and reptiles."
"In 2002 a Health and Safety inspection found that the embankments on the larger pond were unstable and posed a threat to the local community. We were caught between two conflicting legal requirements. For public safety the most practical and economic option was to fill in the ponds Ð but environmental legislation meant we had to keep the ponds in use."
"Happily Mott MacDonald got the various stakeholder bodies - Natural England, Environmental Agency and the local Wild Life trusts - to help us find a solution. As a result Natural England declared the ponds a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and supported the project's development and management, helping us to keep the ponds open within our budget."
"We now have a valuable protected site for wild life built using sustainable materials, with an extended reed bed, footpaths, parking and a bird hide so that visitors can enjoy the ponds and are able to see a number of rare animals in their own habitat."
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