from Sunday Herald, 31 March 2002
FREE by 2003! Beaches free of sewage that is, and within two years, is the bold promise made today by the government's green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).
The filthy state of the nation's bathing waters has long been an environmental disgrace, causing ill-health for swimmers and inviting legal action by the European Commission. Beaches, particularly along the Ayrshire coast, have routinely breached legal limits for faeces in the water.
But now Sepa says that the number of designated bathing waters that fail the mandatory safety standards will be cut in half this year, and reduced to zero (or maybe one) by the end of next year. A report published by Sepa this weekend confirms that nine beaches failed to make the grade in 2001, as revealed by the Sunday Herald last October. Seven of them were on the south-west coast, including Saltcoats, Ayr and Turnberry.
However, Sepa's promise only covers the 60 officially designated bathing waters in Scotland which by law have to keep within the European limits on sewage pollution. Of the 52 undesignated beaches used by the public last year 16, or a third, breach the sewage limit. This is significantly worse than the 25% of undesignated beaches that failed in 2000.
Nevertheless the progress at the designated beaches is a result of sewage improvements coming on stream and new measures to tackle pollution from farms.
"There will be only half as many failures in 2002 unless there is exceptionally wet weather," said Tom Leatherland, Sepa's environment quality manager. High rainfall washes more animal manure off the land into watercourses. Known as "diffuse pollution", this is the biggest remaining cause of beach pollution after proper sewage treatment has been introduced.
Sepa's forecast comes after a five-month "save our beaches" campaign last year by the Sunday Herald and Friends of the Earth Scotland. Yesterday the environmental group welcomed the agency's statement, but warned that it would be a tough job to ensure that no bathing waters breached the legal limits.
But the Scottish Executive has refused to designate any more beaches for the time being. "It would be irresponsible to identify more bathing waters until proposed revision of the European Bathing Waters Directive becomes clearer," said an executive spokesman.
"The current European directive does not require us to make further designations. It only requires us to designate those beaches where bathing is traditionally practised by a large number of bathers."
Last year's undesignated beach failures include Dunnet Bay Castle hill in Caithness, Newburgh in Aberdeenshire, Broughty Ferry in Dundee, Dalgety Bay in Fife, Longniddry near Edinburgh, Helensburgh in Argyll and Bute, Largs Main in North Ayrshire and Barrassie in South Ayrshire.
Tom Leatherland accepted that these undesignated beaches had been given less priority. "At the moment the serious money has gone on designated beaches," he said. "When we have fixed them, we will direct more attention to the non-designated beaches."
That leaves Dr Dixon of Friends of the Earth to warn: "Anyone at Broughty Ferry or any of the other neglected beaches continues to risk swimming in poor quality water."
