Huge clean-up of the river Calder in Mirfield, UK

Huge clean-up of the river Calder in Mirfield, UK

Oily slicks on the River Calder at Mirfield are set to be a thing of the past. Officials believe hundreds of thousands of litres of creosote from a tar works soaked into the ground between the 1920s and 1974. Nuttall, HBG's civil engineering company in the UK, has put in a drainage system to stop the flow of creosoto in to the river and driven 150 metres of metal sheets piles in to the river bank to create a dam.

When the sticky, black pollutant gathers, it will be pumped away through pipelines. Now, client the Environment Agency can establish proper coarse fishing here for the first time in over 100 years. Fish such as roach, bream, tench, gugeon and minnow are already in the river, buth their numbers are set to swell when water is cleaner. Birds such as swans and moorhens at nearby Shepley Marina will also thrive.