A £100m scheme could see a pipeline laid under Frodsham Marshes to carry water to create underground natural gas storage chambers in Northwich.
Frodsham would be the mid-point of the 58km underground pipeline from Bromborough to Northwich so would also be the site for a pumping station containing two-storey high water tanks near Weaver Sailing Club.
Frodsham Town Council this week registered their objection to a planning application for the pipes and pumping station by private company, King Street Energy.
The twin pipeline would be sunk about two metres deep in a three metre-wide trench.
In Frodsham, coming from Northwich, it would follow the south bank of the River Weaver, then cross the river and go beneath the railway viaduct.
It would continue across the old ICI tip behind the Weaver Sailing Club before crossing the Weaver again and under the M56.
It would then run parallel to the motorway on the marshes side as far as Hapsford services before continuing to Bromborough.
The pipeline will help create 10 huge underground natural gas storage caverns at King Street in Northwich by taking water from the Mersey Estuary at Bromborough and injecting it into salt seams through 80 centimetre-wide pipes.
The concentrated salt solution would be removed via a parallel return pipeline and discharged back into the estuary.
Environmentalists, residents and landowners have already lodged objections to the plans.
County Council planning officer, Steve Molloy, said land behind the Weaver Sailing Club would house a large pumping station, comprising “half a dozen buildings” and two circular water tanks measuring 48 metres and 23 metres in diameter. Both would be 6.25 metres high.
A decision on separate applications covering both the gas storage caverns and pipeline is not expected before this summer.
If approved, construction of the pipeline – which Mr Molloy said would run “almost exclusively through agricultural land” – would start in February 2009 and could take up to 18 months to complete, with about 50 metres of pipe laid each day.
He said the water pipeline would be operated for the three years it would then take to create the gas storage caverns, after which “the applicant has indicated it may well be used for similar future projects.”
King Street Project Director, Alex Dornan, stressed the pipeline would never carry gas.
“There will be short-term disruption during the pipeline operation but we would do all in our power to mitigate that. We have deliberately sited the pumping station between the railway and the motorway. The buildings housing the electric pumps would be soundproofed and we would screen them as much as possible.”
