Earthwatcher's photos with the keyword: pollution

This is the Bullhouse colliery minewater discharge into the River Don at Ecklands, near Penistone, West Yorkshire. The mine worked the Halifax Hard seam and was drained by a 'water drift' - a long straight tunnel on a gentle downward gradient - which had it's outfall in the banks of the River Don as in the photo. The mine was abandoned in 1915. Since this photo was taken, the Coal Authority has diverted the minewater, pumping it to treatment works and settling lagoons in an old quarry nearby, before allowing it to return to the river.

Actually it's not tomato soup, but an ochrous minewater discharge from a collapsed, abandoned mineshaft in Ecclesall Woods next to the Limb Brook. The shaft forms part of the long abandoned Dore Colliery and dates from the latter part of the 19th century. The steel plate in the lower right is part of a V-notch weir used to measure the water flow rate. The water temperature here is about 12-13 C all year round due to the geothermal heating effect of the old abandoned coal mine workings that the water has flowed through before emerging from the top of this old shaft. The water is also fairly acid - pH about 5.5.

There are quite a few ochrous discharges from abandoned mine workings in and around the City. This one is the culverted drainage outfall from the abandoned Moss Mine (ganister and coal) in Ryecroft Glen, Dore, Sheffield.