Rob Edwards

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).

Revealed: Scottish Water condemns thousands to pongs and pollution

Exclusive, 3 June 2009

Thousands of people in Glasgow are being condemned to years of pungent pongs and pollution because because of a secret decision by Scottish Water to abandon investment in a dilapidated and overloaded sewage works.

Communities across Scotland are also suffering from smells and overflows at ageing or inadequate sewage works deprived of much-needed money. There have been a series of problems in Edinburgh, Inverness, Fife and Lanarkshire, while Scottish Water has frequently being prosecuted for pollution.

In Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre the water company has been humiliated by the consumer watchdog, Waterwatch Scotland. It has been ordered to apologise for repeatedly mismanaging sewage operations and “systematically trying to rubbish” the complaints of local people.

Water under threat from private companies

from Sunday Herald, 22 March 2009

The multinational water industry has been accused of running a covert campaign to privatise water in Scotland and around the world, threatening rising costs and more pollution.

Researchers at Strathclyde University allege that there has been a “concerted, clever and tacit” attempt by businesses, legislators and regulators to turn Scottish Water into a private company “in all but name”. Internationally “aggressive privatisation” is making the world water crisis worse, they say.

Today is water’s big day. It has been designated by the United Nations as World Water Day, and it sees the end of deliberations at the 156-nation World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey - where the stress has been on the advantages of working with the private sector.

But for many experts, trade unionists and campaigners, it is the encroaching influence of water corporations that is the problem. They fear that public benefits may lose out to private profits.

Warning over wildlife risk from wave and tidal power

from Sunday Herald, 25 January 2009

Ministers’ plans for a major expansion of renewable energy into the seas around Scotland could threaten wildlife, according to the government’s nature conservation advisers.

In a report due out tomorrow, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) will highlight the risk of seabirds, seals, whales and sharks being killed by collisions with wave or tidal turbines.

The animals may have to be deliberately scared away by noise, SNH will suggest. Or renewable energy plants may have to be temporarily shut down, or removed altogether.

The sewage that sloshes over Scotland's beaches

from Sunday Herald, 14 September 2008

For the second year running beaches across Scotland have been badly polluted by sewage in breach of safety limits, endangering the health of paddlers, swimmers and surfers.

Monitoring results released today by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) reveal that seven designated bathing waters have again failed to meet 30-year-old legal standards. Another six undesignated beaches also failed to make the grade.

A further 20 designated bathing waters narrowly missed breaching the limits but nevertheless recorded high levels of pollution. Overall this summer was as least as bad as last year, which was the worst for six years.

The beaches being polluted with sewage this summer

from Sunday Herald, 20 July 2008

Beaches across Scotland are being contaminated with sewage this summer in breach of 30-year-old safety limits, threatening bathers with illness and infections.

One bathing water - Cruden Bay near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire - has already failed to meet the legal standard for 2008. Ten other beaches have been given a “yellow card” by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

They include two newly designated bathing waters: Rosemarkie near Fortrose in Highland and Seafield at Kirkcaldy in Fife. In both cases Sepa has linked the pollution to problems at nearby sewage plants, though this has been disputed by their operator, Scottish Water.

Huge gaps exposed in Scotland's flood warning system

from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008

People living in half of Scotland could miss out on vital flood warnings because of huge gaps in the country’s network of weather radars.

Some of the areas most vulnerable to flooding around the Moray Firth and in Dumfries and Galloway are not covered, putting their populations in danger from flash floods and sudden storms.

But now MSPs are calling for urgent action to plug the gaps, and bring the flood warning system up to scratch. They point out that radar coverage in Scotland is much poorer than in England and Wales.

Trouble ahead on breaches of European laws

from Sunday Herald, 06 April 2008

Ministers are preparing to face censure over alleged breaches of European laws meant to protect whales and birds of prey and to prevent pollution, an internal report obtained by the Sunday Herald reveals.

The Scottish government is also anticipating “potential problems” with legal action from the European Commission (EC) over the controversial wind farm proposed for the Isle of Lewis, fisheries policy, environmental assessments and sewage leakages in Campbeltown.

An up-to-date database of all the active legal disputes between the Scottish government and the EC has been released under freedom of information legislation. Details of the so-called “infraction cases” were kept secret until the Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion, ordered that to end last December.