Rob Edwards

Revealed: how the MoD gets away with dumping radioactive waste at sea

from Sunday Herald, 10 March 2013

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been evading an international ban on dumping radioactive waste at sea by defining thousands of uranium weapons lost in the Solway Firth as “placements”.

Minutes of secret meetings released under freedom of information law reveal that the MoD was worried about breaching an inter-government agreement on marine pollution by firing depleted uranium (DU) tank rounds into the sea from a military range at Dundrennan near Kirkcudbright. 

But officials found a way round the problem, by arguing that the munitions were not being “dumped” in the sea, but “placed” there. This is despite the fact that attempts to retrieve them have failed, and their locations are unknown.

Campaigners have accused the MoD of desperately resorting to “semantic trickery” to justify its plans to dump more DU weapons in Scottish waters. Based on past practice, the MoD will restart test-firing at Dundrennan this year, they say.

In the last 30 years, army tanks have fired more than 6,700 shells into the Solway Firth from the range, containing nearly 30 tonnes of DU. The shells pierce canvas targets set up on the cliff tops, and then plunge into the sea.

Wildlife and fisheries at risk from island shipping plan

from Sunday Herald, 14 October 2012

A plan to allow ships to dump dirty water into one of Scotland’s most precious and historic bays is facing a series of formal complaints and the prospect of prosecution because of fears that it will destroy a wildlife area and jeopardise a multi-million pound fishing industry.

Orkney Islands Council has run into fierce opposition for pushing ahead with a proposal to allow oil tankers to dispose of their ballast water in Scapa Flow, a large sheltered natural harbour famous for its military history - and crucial for a nearby nature conservation area.

Environmentalists have angrily condemned the council for countenancing “environmental madness coupled with financial folly”. They are demanding that the proposal be withdrawn and that the councillors responsible be “hounded out of office”.

Scapa Flow was mentioned in ancient Viking sagas and was the main base for the British navy in both world wars. In 1919 the Germans scuttled 74 of their warships trapped there to avoid them falling into British hands.

The bay is linked to the Loch of Stenness, which is the largest brackish lagoon in the UK. The loch is protected under law as it has been designated as a Special Area of Conservation by the European Union.

Two beaches fail 36-year-old pollution safety limits

from Sunday Herald, 16 September 2012

Two of Scotland’s popular beaches have broken 36-year old pollution safety limits this summer, posing health dangers for swimmers, surfers and paddlers.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that Heads of Ayr in South Ayrshire and Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire will tomorrow be officially branded as failures for the 2012 bathing season by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Both bathing waters have recorded levels of faecal contamination in excess of safety levels agreed by the European Union in 1976. The contamination can cause ear and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, be fatal.

At Heads of Ayr, animal faeces washed off the shore during heavy rain were blamed for the contamination. According to Sepa, this had “possibly” been combined with pollution from sewage discharges.

At Stonehaven, Sepa said there had been a “pollution incident” as well as heavy rainfall. Two other beaches – Prestwick in South Ayrshire and Sandyhills on the Solway Firth – narrowly missed been classified as failures because of new rules which enable short-term pollution to be discounted if it is predicted and the public warned.

Although this year’s two official failures were fewer than last year’s four, the overall level of pollution in 2012 was significantly worse than in 2011. As many as 49 other bathing waters failed to meet the tighter guideline standard this year, compared to 39 last year (see table below).

Solved: the mystery of the 30,000 plastic toys lost at sea

20 August 2012

It has become a modern-day myth. The fate of almost 30,000 toy ducks, frogs, beavers and turtles lost in an accident at sea in 1992 has intrigued millions around the world.

Stories that they had somehow managed to migrate across the Arctic from the Pacific and circumnavigate the globe have proliferated. There have been numerous reports of them turning up years later on the east coast of the US and in Europe.

The truth, however, is less romantic, and much more disturbing. Along with billions of tonnes of other plastic wastes, they are disintegrating into tiny fragments of “plastic sand” that will pollute the planet for hundreds of years, threatening wildlife and destroying the environment.

That, at least, is the conclusion of Donovan Hohn, a New York author who has spent five years investigating what actually happened to the toys. He is due to talk about his findings at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Tuesday evening.

“At the outset, I had no intention of doing what I eventually did: quit my job, kiss my wife farewell, and ramble about the Northern Hemisphere aboard all manner of watercraft,” he wrote in his book, Moby Duck.

Revealed: Scotland’s ‘nasty’ legacy of toxic sludge lagoons

from Sunday Herald, 05 August 2012 

Water and sewage treatment has left a “potentially nasty” legacy of 26 toxic sludge lagoons scattered around Scotland, an investigation by the Sunday Herald has revealed. 

Tens of thousands of cubic metres of sludge contaminated with aluminium and other pollutants are being stored at sites near Wigtown, Barrhead, Coatbridge, Falkirk, Cupar and Inverness, as well as across Argyll, Aberdeenshire, Sutherland, Orkney and elsewhere (see table below).

An investigation into the safety of the sludge lagoons has been launched by the government company, Scottish Water, while environmentalists are demanding that the sites be cleaned up. 

According to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), 18 of the sites are left over from when drinking water was treated with an aluminium compound to remove impurities. The resultant sludges have been contaminated with aluminium, which has been linked to breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other health problems.

“There is a possible risk of such aluminium leaching,” Sepa said, though its “binding nature” meant that it was likely to stay in the sludge. Other lagoons contained old sludges from sewage treatment that were “relatively benign”.

Two beaches polluted in breach of safety limits

from Sunday Herald, 15 July 2012

Two of Scotland’s most popular beaches have been polluted in breach of basic safety limits because of heavy rain, according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Prestwick in South Ayrshire and Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire have become the first bathing waters in Scotland this summer to fail sewage contamination limits first introduced 36 years ago.

They have both recorded two or more water samples with excessive faecal contamination since testing began on 21 May. This can give bathers and surfers ear and stomach infections, and in extreme cases can be life-threatening.

According to Sepa, the most likely cause of the pollution is the downpours that have plagued parts of Scotland in recent weeks. Heavy showers can cause sewers to overflow, and wash farm animal faeces from the land into the sea.

The failure at Prestwick “was likely caused by recent rainfall”, says Sepa. At Stonehaven, problems occurred because “a period of persistent and intermittently heavy rainfall coincided with a pollution incident on the Maxie Burn.”

Beaches nears Sellafield contaminated with over 1,200 radioactive hotspots

from The Guardian, 04 July 2012

A record number of radioactive hotspots have been found contaminating public beaches near the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, according to a report by the site’s operator.

As many as 383 radioactive particles and stones were detected and removed from seven beaches in 2010-11, bringing the total retrieved since 2006 to 1,233. Although Sellafield insists that the health risks for beach users are “very low”, there are concerns that some potentially dangerous particles may remain undetected and that contamination keeps being found.

Anti-nuclear campaigners have called for beaches to be closed, or for signs to be erected warning the public of the pollution. But the government’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said “no special precautionary actions are required at this time to limit access to, or use of, beaches.”

Elsewhere, the public has been warned about radioactive contamination on beaches. There are warning notices about radioactive particles on Sandside beach near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness, and at Dalgety Bay in Fife people have been barred since October from a section of the foreshore contaminated with radium from old military planes.

Sellafield has been monitoring a string of beaches along the Cumbrian coast every year since 2006. This was requested by the government’s Environment Agency, following the discovery of a highly radioactive particle on the foreshore 700 metres north of the site’s waste pipelines in 2003.

Exposed: the dirty beaches that won prizes for being clean

from Sunday Herald, 03 June 2012 

Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), the government-funded anti-litter charity, has come under fierce attack for giving high-profile “seaside awards” to beaches that have been officially condemned as badly polluted.

Five bathing waters in Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire and Fife rated as having “poor” water quality by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) have been publicly lauded by KSB for their “high standards of cleanliness, safety, and water quality”.

The revelation could deal a fatal blow to the credibility of KSB’s “empty and meaningless” beach awards, according to the campaign group, Surfers Against Sewage. Serious flaws in the awards had been exposed, it said.

This was denied, however, by KSB, which insisted that it was simply applying the current legal standards. The quality of the bathing water was only one of the criteria it used to grant awards, it said. 

A new analysis by Sepa has revealed that 20 of Scotland’s official bathing waters would fail new pollution limits due to come into force in 2016. They will replace 36-year-old limits seen by many as out-dated, inadequate and unable to protect against illness.

Five of the beaches rated by Sepa as “poor” – the worst possible rating – were last week crowned by KSB as winners of their “coveted” seaside awards. They were South Beach in Ayr, Millport Bay on the island of Great Cumbrae in North Ayrshire, Seafield at Kirkcaldy in Fife and Stonehaven and Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire.

A further five beaches categorised by Sepa as just “sufficient” under the new pollution rules – the second-worst rating - also received awards from KSB. They were at Aberdeen, Kinghorn in Fife, Nairn in Moray, and Fraserburgh and Balmedie, in Aberdeenshire.

Selling water to England is a pipe dream, say experts

from Sunday Herald, 18 March 2012

Alex Salmond’s plan to sell water to England has run into a barrage of criticism from experts, who warn that it would be impractical, polluting and horrendously expensive.

They point out that other solutions to the droughts increasingly afflicting the southeast of England would be much cheaper and easier. They include digging a new reservoir near London and transporting water from wet areas much closer than Scotland, like Northumbria, the Lake District or parts of Wales.

Last week the Environment Agency warned that some areas of England were facing a severe and widespread drought this spring and summer. Seven water companies announced hosepipe bans from next month, preventing people in southern and eastern England from watering gardens, cleaning cars and filling swimming pools.

Interviewed by schoolchildren, Salmond suggested that Scotland could help alleviate the long term shortages. It would be a “great thing” if Scotland became known as the “land of clean water”, he argued.

“We are going to develop our water company so it can do things internationally,” he said. “There might well be an argument at some time for the transportation of water resources. And because it costs to transport, you would sell it on that basis as an ongoing commercial transaction.”

Scottish ministers have written to the coalition government in London offering to assist if water supplies ran low. “We have massive resources, and we are willing to help put those resources to use, to help the southeast of England solve the strategic water shortage,” said the Scottish infrastructure secretary, Alex Neil.

Still swimming in sewage on Scotland’s beaches

from Sunday Herald, 04 September 2011

Dangerous levels of sewage pollution have been detected at 18 of Scotland’s most attractive and popular beaches this summer, according to new figures from the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Four of the bathing waters have been so contaminated that they have now failed 35-year-old sewage safety limits for the season. They are Sandyhills in Dumfries and Galloway, Irvine in North Ayrshire, Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders and Lossiemouth East in Moray.

A further 14 beaches have also been badly polluted because they recorded single samples of seawater in breach of the safety limit (see table below). It takes two sample breaches to be deemed to have failed for the year.

The pollution comes from overflowing sewers and from farm animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal for surfers, bathers and paddlers.

“We are shocked and disappointed to hear that so many popular Scottish beaches and bathing waters have been polluted by sewage discharges this summer,” said Andy Cummins, from the campaign group, Surfers Against Sewage.

“This is a serious public health risk. With so many people using the coast to relax, surf and enjoy with their families, it’s vital that the alarming rate of raw sewage releases in Scotland is tackled immediately.”

Exposed: the PFI sewage scandal

from Sunday Herald, 27 March 2011

A massive £4.8 billion of public money is being paid to multinational corporations to run sewage works that are plagued with breakdowns, pollution and pongs, an investigation by the Sunday Herald has revealed.

Internal reports from Scottish Water lay bare for the first time the scandal of the sewage contracts signed with private companies under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) backed by Labour and Conservative governments.

The problems at PFI sewage plants across Scotland have been so serious and intractable that Scottish Water has been pushing to take them back into public ownership. It has also been forced to pay out over £100 million extra to try and rectify some of the faults.

Yet communities around the country still have to endure nauseating smells, and many feel that they have been palmed off. Experts say their complaints are justified.

PFI was introduced as a way of trying to build public projects using private money. In the late 1990s nine PFI contracts were signed with private companies to build, refurbish and run 21 sewage plants across Scotland, dealing with half of the nation’s human waste.

According to Scottish Water documents, the sewage plants they inherited when they formed in 2002 cost nearly £600 million in capital costs. Contracts to run them cover periods of between 25 and 40 years and are costing around £130 million a year, giving an overall cost to the public purse of £4.8 billion.

Emergency tugs needed to prevent disaster, says leaked report

from Sunday Herald, 13 February 2011 

The Westminster government is risking environmental disasters by scrapping emergency tugs in breach of its own expert advice, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

A leaked report prepared for the UK government’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) warns that four tugs are needed to prevent “catastrophic” spillages of oil, toxic chemicals or radioactive waste from accidents at sea.

Yet UK ministers have decided to cancel the £12-million-a-year contract for the tugs from September in order to save money. Alongside plans to close coastguard stations and withdraw Nimrod rescue aircraft, this has provoked a storm of protest from the Scottish government and local authorities.

Withdrawing funding for the tugs was “reckless and wrong-headed”, according to the Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary, Richard Lochhead MSP. “It has potentially serious consequences for human and environmental safety,” he said.

“Recent incidents have underlined the vital role that these emergency tugs play in some of the most dangerous and sensitive areas of our coastline, and we continue to press UK ministers to reconsider their decision.”

Sewage still polluting Scotland’s beaches

from Sunday Herald, 12 September 2010

Seventeen of Scotland’s most beautiful and popular beaches have again been contaminated with dangerous levels of sewage despite a three-decade effort to clean them up.

The pollution comes from overflowing sewers and from animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal for surfers, bathers and paddlers.

The preliminary results for the 2010 bathing season revealed by the Sunday Herald today have been condemned by environmental groups. But the poor outcome is blamed on bad weather by the government’s pollution watchdog.

Scottish beach fails sewage safety limits

from Sunday Herald, 01 August 2010

Popular beaches across Scotland are again being polluted with sewage this summer, putting the health of bathers, paddlers and surfers at risk.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that one beach at the Heads of Ayr has already breached the sewage safety limit for the year, making it the first to fail so far this season.

Another seven bathing waters around the coast have also suffered serious sewage pollution. They include four more in the south west: Saltcoats in North Ayrshire; Girvan in South Ayrshire and Carrick and Rockcliffe, both in Dumfries and Galloway.

Other dirty beaches are Earlsferry in Fife and Milsey Bay in North Berwick. In the last two months, they have recorded one sample in breach of the limit for faecal coliforms.

The pollution comes from leaking sewers, or from animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal.

If a bathing water registers two failed samples, it is deemed to have failed for the season, which extends to mid-September. This is what has already happened at Heads of Ayr, a beach to the south west of Ayr heavily used by visitors from nearby holiday parks.

Risk to beachgoers from thousands of dumped flares

from Sunday Herald, 25 July 2010

Thousands of dangerous distress flares could be illegally dumped and put the lives of beachgoers around Scotland at risk, coastguards have warned.

New arrangements for disposing of out-of-date flares, which can contain powerful explosives, make it much more difficult to get rid of them. The fear is that this could prompt some sailors to throw them overboard, or abandon them on land.

There are now only six authorised disposal sites at coastguard stations in Scotland, with only one on the west coast mainland. And unused flares can only be dropped off at limited times, with appointments having to be made in advance.

Brightly coloured flares, which are carried by sailors to attract attention in case of emergencies, have to be replaced every four years. Up to 35,000 are disposed of every year in the UK.

Before April this year, boat-owners could dispose of “time-expired pyrotechnics” at more than 70 coastguard stations in the UK. They used to be regularly collected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), who would ensure they were safely blown up.

Scotland’s beaches are some of the most polluted in Europe

from Sunday Herald, 20 June 2010

Scotland has become one of the dirtiest nations in Europe. The pollution of our beautiful beaches with sewage is now worse than almost every other country on the continent, according to a new report by the European Environment Agency.

The bathing waters around the coasts of twenty countries are cleaner than Scotland’s, including those of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. Only two countries have beaches that are more contaminated with faeces:  Poland and Ireland.

Scotland’s record has been condemned as “shameful” by environmental groups. They point out that, with tougher standards due to be introduced from 2015, many of Scotland’s beaches will be labelled “unfit for bathing”.

The European Environment Agency has published its latest analysis (pdf) of the quality of bathing water in the European Union for 2009. This shows the proportion of coastal bathing waters in each country that failed to meet  basic sewage safety limits set more than 30 years ago.

These are beaches where the levels of faecal pollution from humans and animals are so high that bathers, surfers and paddlers run serious risks of getting stomach, skin or ear infections. In extreme cases, infections can be lethal.

Revealed: drinking water contaminated with slug toxin

from Sunday Herald, 23 May 2010

Drinking water in the north east of Scotland has been contaminated by a toxic slug pesticide in breach of safety limits, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Many thousands of consumers in the Peterhead area have been drinking water containing excess levels of metaldehyde, a hazardous chemical compound widely used by farmers to kill slugs. Two other areas nearby in the north east are officially said to be “at risk” of pollution from the pesticide.

The revelation has sparked anxiety amongst local people and environmentalists, while the pesticide industry says it is taking the issue “extremely seriously”. Government watchdogs insist, however, that there is “no risk” to public health, though they are making concerted efforts to cut back on the contamination.

Slugs and snails pose a major problem for farmers and gardeners because they eat crops and plants. Metaldehyde is the pesticide most commonly used against them, often in distinctive bright blue pellets spread across the ground.

It has been blamed for accidentally poisoning pets and making children ill, and comes with a strongly-worded official health warning: “Since this product contains metaldehyde, which can kill if eaten, it must be kept away from children and pets.”

Could the US and Canada go to war over water?

review from Scottish Review of Books, 16 November 2009

Peak Water: Civilisation and the World’s Water Crisis, by Alexander Bell, Luath Press, £16.99.

Leaving Las Vegas is an exhilarating experience. As the flashing lights fade and the gaudy boulevards give way to empty highways, the joy of escaping into the wild and mountainous reaches of the Mojave desert can be intoxicating.

There are many things that are disturbing about the city - its greed, its morality, its music - but there is one that rankles above all: its environmental absurdity. To sustain the metropolitan area’s population of approaching two million, water is brought 1,400 miles from the Rockies by the Colorado River via a vast artificial lake created by the Hoover dam.

It is, as Scottish journalist Alexander Bell emphatically points out in his book, a dangerous mirage. “This may be a sure case of ecocide,” he says. “Las Vegas can only die, and within our lifetimes, because the water supply is running out.”

He recounts how the compact agreed in 1922 to divide up the water between the seven states that border the river was fundamentally flawed, because it was based on an unusually wet period in history. As a result, the compact has been under increasing strain, and periodically the mighty Colorado fails to make it to the sea.

Revealed: the beaches that are swimming in sewage

from Sunday Herald, 13 September 2009

Some of Scotland’s most popular beaches have been badly polluted by sewage in breach of safety limits this summer, putting the health of swimmers, surfers and paddlers at risk.

Monitoring results to be unveiled by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) this week will name up to five of the nation’s official bathing waters as having failed 30-year-old sewage standards.

This is the third year running that Scotland’s beaches have recorded poor results, with several having suffered repeated failures. As before, Sepa has blamed “exceptionally heavy rain” for flooding sewers and washing animal faeces into the sea.

High levels of faecal pollution in the water can give bathers nasty stomach and ear infections, as well as skin rashes. In extreme cases, infections can be lethal.

The worst pollution has been at Ettrick Bay on the Isle of Bute, which Sepa regards as “disappointing” because of all the work that has been done to try and prevent run-off from local farms. The beach has failed the legal limits in nine of the last 11 years.

Scotland’s waters to stay polluted for many years

from Sunday Herald, 07 June 2009

Delays in cleaning up Scotland’s polluted rivers, lochs and coastlines will breach European law, leaving vast reaches of water contaminated for many years.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that over 800 stretches of water covering more than 11,000 square kilometres will still be classified bad, poor or moderate in 2015 under official plans to improve the nation’s water quality.

Scotland is aiming so low that it has dropped down the league of European countries, according to a new international ranking. Places in England and Germany are now doing better, environmentalists say.

At the moment more than third of Scotland’s waterways are officially rated as polluted or ecologically damaged. This is condemned as a “national disgrace” by one of the country’s most powerful conservation groups, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).