The red river's discolouration brings back memories of an industry long gone.

But now the ochre staining Skinningrove Beck, in east Cleveland, is helping preserve precious natural resources thanks to a University of Teesside project.

A team from the university's Clean Environment Management Centre (Clemance), working with business, has developed a way of extracting the minerals creating the discolouration and recycling them to be used in the cement industry.

The people of Skinningrove are used to their red beck, a legacy of the ironstone mines that were at their most numerous in the 1850s, but which gradually declined and eventually disappeared.

A treatment system had been installed to extract the ochre - a mixture of clay, ferric oxide and water - that was causing the discolouration, but that system eventually stopped working and the river ran red again.

Villagers, working through the community organisation Skinningrove Link-Up, called in Dr Richard Lord, from Clemance's bioremediation programme, to see if he could find a solution.

Dr Lord, an expert in cleaning up former industrial sites for re-use, and industrial symbiosis project officer Christine Parry worked with waste disposal company Onyx to solve the problem.

Skinningrove iron oxide is now used as a component in cement.

Clemance centre manager Gareth Kane said: "Because the iron oxide is being recycled, it means that the aggregates industry does not have to mine for new resources, which gives an added environmental benefit."

Dr Lord said: "In the 1850s, the area was the worldwide centre for iron and steel and the mines were part of that.

"Although the last mine closed in the 1960s, the red water continues to leach out of the underground workings, which is bad for the beck.

"It is unsightly, smothers everything, wildlife is affected, and local people say it blocks the sewers. Removing the iron oxide has a benefit all round, cleaning up the beck and protecting natural resources, which do not need to be mined."

Published: 04/10/2005