Prevention of wharf pollution – Rain water treatment
Action carried out in 2003/2004
A pollution prevention plan for the Port of Bayonne wharfs has already been in place for a number of years and it covers three areas:
- adaptation of buckets used when unloading products; the hoppers (kinds of funnels that allow the tractors of lorries to be loaded from the ships) have been treated in order to capture dust; the cleaning of the quays deals with the problem of dust deposits on the ground. This cleaning is done by sweeping and vacuuming the deposits. Then the work is continued by cleaning the lorries themselves: a wash station has been set up in Tarnos since mid-2002. An incentive policy has been set up in order to motivate the drivers to carry out this indispensible work;
- treatment of rainwater before it is discharged into the River Adour: the maize dust and cement dust can be collected and treated before it is discharged into the river;
- this process is operational in the Tarnos zone: the quays are equipped with grids through which rain water runs. The network recovers the water loaded with particles in sediment tanks that have been installed to decant, skim and filter the rainwater.
Similar equipment was installed in 2003 in the Blancpignon zone and in 2004 in the Saint Bernard zone.