Research and analysis
Metal mine water pollution investigations in the River Wear catchment
Investigations of how best to improve water quality in the River Wear catchment by reducing pollution from historical metal mining.
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More than 80km of rivers in Weardale, County Durham, are polluted by zinc, cadmium and lead from abandoned metal mines.
Monitoring by the Environment Agency has identified several important sources of the metals which cause this pollution.
The Coal Authority and Environment Agency are carrying out a number of projects to investigate how best to improve river water quality in the Wear catchment.
These projects are summarised in this report.
Updates to this page
Published 20 December 2021Last updated 10 January 2023 + show all updates
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Updated timeline in HTML document.
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First published.