Rob Edwards

Drinking water contamination puts health of thousands at risk

from Sunday Herald, 27 September 2015

Many thousands of people across Scotland are endangering their health by drinking dirty water from private supplies, according to a new report from a government watchdog.

Tests in 2014 detected contamination by bacteria and metals in 4,400 samples from springs, wells, lochs and rivers used for drinking water. One bug known to cause illness, E coli, was detected in more than 500 supplies.

The poor quality of water from private supplies has been highlighted as a concern by Sue Petch, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland. Critics say that the system meant to combat the problem is “broken”, and that urgent action is required.

There are over 20,000 private water supplies in Scotland, relied on daily by over 188,000 people mostly in rural areas. In addition large numbers of people use the supplies occasionally, when they are on holiday or in the countryside.

Tests in 2014 found that 2,700 samples from the larger ‘type A’ supplies – six per cent of the samples taken - failed to meet water quality standards. There were 549 samples with coliform bacteria, 303 with E coli, and others containing iron, aluminium and lead.

Most of the breaches were in the six local authorities with the highest number of private water supplies: Argyll and Bute, Highland, Perth and Kinross, Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders and Aberdeenshire (see table below).

Of the smaller ‘type B’ supplies tested, 1,696 samples (12 per cent) were contaminated, including 486 with coliform bacteria and 244 with E coli. But the vast majority of the smaller supplies weren’t tested.

Diageo under fire for failing to meet targets to cut pollution

from Sunday Herald, 23 August 2015

Diageo, the £11 billion drinks giant and world-leading whisky producer, has admitted breaching seven out of eight of its environmental targets to cut pollution and waste.

The British multinational, responsible for at least 24 Scottish whisky brands including Johnny Walker, Bells, J&B, Talisker and Langavulin, failed to cut waste water contamination, climate emissions and landfill waste as it promised. The company, which made over £3 billion profit in 2014, also owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Baileys, and Captain Morgan.

One of Diageo’s most polluting plants - with some of the highest emissions of any industrial site in Scotland - is the Cameronbridge grain distillery at Leven in Fife. The plant’s carbon dioxide pollution has risen in recent years to a record high.

Environmentalists have attacked the company’s “shoddy” performance, alleging that it is damaging the clean image on which its whisky depends. Diageo argued, however, that its targets were “very stretching” and it had significantly reduced its environmental impact.

In 2008 Diageo set itself eight targets to achieve in 2015, aimed at significantly improving the environmental sustainability of its business. But its latest annual report reveals that it has only managed to meet one of them – improving water efficiency by 30 per cent.

‘Hello, can you help me? Am I allowed to burn down my house?’

from Sunday Herald, 9 August 2015

My fridge is a biohazard, my bathwater has turned lurid green and I don’t know how to dispose of my false teeth. And am I allowed to burn down my house?

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has revealed some of the more bizarre requests for help received recently by staff at its 24-hour emergency call centre at Holytown in North Lanarkshire.

The centre, which usually deals with floods, waste dumping, pollution and a host of other serious problems, occasionally has to cope with calls from people anxious about less earth-shattering matters. Staff have learnt to “expect the unexpected,” Sepa says.

Amongst the 73,000 phone calls the centre has taken in the last year, some have left trained operators bewildered. One worried caller asked if Sepa inspectors could come to his house to check for “airborne hazards” from a fridge, because everything inside had turned black while it had been switched off for three months.

A mother rang the emergency number, frantic because her bathwater had turned a lurid shade of green. It turned out that the woman’s teenage daughter had spiked a shampoo bottle with hair dye.

An elderly gentleman called up asking how he could safely dispose of an old pair of false teeth. A singing group asked if their annual party would have any environmental health implications, while one woman reported slugs in her kitchen.

Drinking water contamination incidents double in a year

from Sunday Herald, 26 July 2015

Scottish Water has come under attack from a government safety watchdog because the number of contamination problems and incidents doubled across the drinking water network in a year.

There had been a “deterioration throughout the water supply system” on bacterial quality, according to the regulator, Sue Petch. She has also launched legal enforcement action because of an “unacceptable” level of faecal parasites and a “very disappointing” number of incidents at one water treatment works in Aberdeenshire.

Petch, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator, has released her report for 2014. It reveals there were 53 incidents across Scotland rated as significant, serious and major, some of them contaminating drinking water delivered to hundreds of consumers.

Her report does not include the major incident last month when more than 6,000 residents in North Lanarkshire were left without tap water for two days because of contamination by an “oily-based substance”. The cause of the incident is still being investigated.

Petch points out that water quality standards for coliform bacteria, used as an indicator of contamination, were breached 40 times in 2014, compared to 17 times in 2013. “I am disappointed to have to report this position and have requested that Scottish Water examine disinfection processes, in detail, at all of its treatment works,” she says.

A quarter of Scotland’s beaches badly polluted by bacteria – yet some win prizes

from Sunday Herald, 7 June 2015

Achmelvich beach, one of the cleanest (photo thanks to Damian Shields)

One in four of Scotland’s beaches are in a “poor” state because of toxic contamination from sewage and animal wastes, according to an analysis by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

The Scottish Government’s pollution watchdog has given 21 bathing waters all around the coast a rock-bottom rating under tough new European safety standards. This means that bacteria and viruses in the water could pose serious risks to the health of paddlers, swimmers and surfers this summer.

Six of the bathing waters rated as poor are in Ayrshire, four in Dumfries and Galloway, and three around the Moray Firth. Two are in Aberdeenshire, two in East Lothian, and one each in Edinburgh, Angus, Fife and Scottish Borders.

Seven of the beaches badly polluted by overflowing sewers and animal faeces have been given Seaside Awards by the government-backed charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful. One of the reasons for winning the awards is said to be “good water quality”.

But the campaign group, Surfers Against Sewage, pointed out that the award-winning bathing waters were so dirty that they would give bathers a one in seven chance of contracting gastroenteritis. It would be a “mistake” to suggest that they were clean, safe or had good water quality, argued the group’s Andy Cummins.

“The tougher standards have been introduced to offer the public better protection against a wide array of significant health risks,” he said. “Those beaches that fail urgently need to adopt new actions and measures to ensure water quality is safe for the public.”

Scottish Water under fire for 51 pollution offences

from Sunday Herald, 15 February 2015

Scottish Water has been branded as one of Scotland’s biggest polluters after government figures revealed that it has been guilty of 51 pollution offences in the last ten years.

The public water company has been fined more than £240,000 for 47 spills, leaks and discharges between 2005 and 2014. It has been formally admonished by courts for four further incidents.

Recent offences include chlorine discharges that killed over 1,000 young trout and salmon in the Alva Burn near Alloa, sewage contamination of the River Kelvin in Kirkintilloch, and leaks of over 10,000 litres of lethal sulphuric acid into the River Devon in Clackmannanshire.

The average fine paid by Scottish Water over the ten years was £4,700, with fines for 28 of the pollution breaches below that. The company, which is owned by the Scottish Government, turns over £1 billion a year.

The relatively low level of the fines has prompted concerns that they are failing to deter Scottish Water from making blunders that annihilate wildlife. One environmental group is now calling for the company’s senior managers to be made personally liable for pollution.

Exposed: how the whisky and golf industries broke the rules on water

from Sunday Herald, 18 January 2015

Whisky and golf, two industries that help define Scotland around the globe, have been exposed as major environmental offenders by a government watchdog. 

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has condemned the performance of distilleries and golf courses across the country as “poor” because they have broken the rules by taking more water than permitted. Farmers and other businesses have also come under fire. 

Sepa has further criticised more than 200 operators for failing to say how much water they used. They include more farmers, golf courses and distilleries, as well as Edinburgh Zoo, Scone Palace in Perth and the US property tycoon, Donald Trump.

Sepa regulates the removal of water from streams, rivers, lochs and the ground to protect wildlife, limit pollution and ensure that the precious natural resource is fairly shared. It will take legal enforcement action against businesses that persistently fail to comply, it warns.

When Sepa published its 2013 assessments of the environmental performances of Scottish businesses last November, it kept the names and ratings of 961 water operations secret “for reasons of national security”. But it has now released a list of the assessments to the Sunday Herald in response to a request under freedom of information law.

Overflowing sewers and farms pollute 14 beaches across Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 28 September 2014

The health of paddlers, swimmers and surfers at 14 beaches across Scotland has been put at risk by pollution from overflowing sewers and farms, official figures reveal. 

The annual survey of the state of Scotland’s bathing waters, due to be unveiled by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) this week, will show that contamination from human and animal faeces this summer has been worse than last year.

The two dirtiest beaches were at Heads of Ayr in South Ayrshire and Lunan Bay in Angus, which suffered so much pollution that they failed to meet basic sewage safety limits introduced 38 years ago. Last year, no beaches in Scotland breached these limits.

But this year three samples of water at Heads of Ayr in May and August contained levels of toxic E-coli bacteria in breach of the legal limits. According to Sepa, this was because heavy rain caused “sewer overflows” and washed animal wastes from farmland and urban areas.

Another two beaches – Irvine in North Ayrshire and Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders – also recorded five sample failures between them. But four of these are liable to be discounted because they were correctly predicted by electronic warning signs at the beaches.

Ten other beaches in Ayrshire, Argyll, Edinburgh, East Lothian, Angus, Moray and Highland had single water samples that failed the safety limits this summer (see table below). The contamination from bacteria and viruses can cause ear and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, be fatal.

Millions of pearl mussels wiped out by sewage pollution, say scientists

Exclusive, 12 September 2014

Millions of freshwater pearl mussels have been killed by sewage pollution of the River Spey in northeast Scotland over the last 15 years, according to scientific reports released under freedom of information law.

Experts from the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen have revealed that the number of mussels in the river has halved from 10 million in 1998-9 to five million in 2013. They blame high levels of phosphorus and other pollutants in sewage discharges for the decline, along with other factors.

Freshwater pearl mussels, a globally endangered species that can live for more than 100 years, are among the UK’s most protected wildlife. They hide at the bottom of clean, fast-flowing rivers and have long been victims of illegal fishing for the pearls they sometimes produce.

But the mussels are also under threat from pollution, the scientists warn. In detailed draft reports for the Cairngorms National Park Authority in May and June, they argue that the environmental standards set for the Spey are far too lax. 

Concentrations of phosphorus in the Spey "are generally too high and of greatest immediate concern,” they say. Standards under the European Union’s water framework directive "have been set considerably higher than they should be, possibly by 1-2 orders of magnitude”.

Exposed: the dirty beaches given prizes for being clean

from Sunday Herald, 15 June 2014

Eight beaches across Scotland officially condemned as “poor” because their polluted bathing waters make people sick have been given prizes for “good water quality” by the government-backed charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB).

Another 12 bathing waters contaminated by human and animal faeces and rated as merely “sufficient” by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) have also won KSB’s much-trumpeted seaside awards for 2014. 

The awards have been denounced as “worthless” by environmentalists and criticised as “embarrassing” by politicians. They have earned KSB nearly £20,000 in application fees from local authorities and others.

A new analysis by Sepa has rated 20 of Scotland’s most popular bathing waters as “poor” because they fail to meet European pollution limits currently being brought into force. The waters are badly contaminated with toxic bacteria like E-coli from overflowing sewers or animal wastes washed off the land.

Yet eight of these dirty beaches - in South Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Fife, Angus, Aberdeenshire and Moray – have been celebrated by KSB as “some of the cleanest and best managed beaches in the country”. One – Central Beach in Nairn – was chosen by the Scottish tourism minister, Fergus Ewing MSP, to launch the awards two weeks ago.

Letting the rivers run naturally to save homes from being flooded

from Scottish Wildlife Trust magazine, November 2013

Near Cringletie in the Scottish Borders, the river is starting to meander again. For the first time in two centuries, Eddleston Water is being allowed to flow down to join the Tweed in Peebles as it once used to - gently, lazily and naturally.

Since the early 19th century the water has been progressively straitjacketed. Cutting through the green, curving countryside, it has looked like an unnatural slit in the earth, sliced straight by human hand parallel to the A703.

But in August, the Scottish environment minister, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, donned a bright blue hardhat and sat in a shiny orange mechanical digger to oversee the opening of a new bend in the river. It’s called “re-meandering”, and it’s modern-day engineers trying to undo the damage that’s been done by their predecessors.

In the past, to recoup land for roads, railways, buildings and farms, rivers have been redirected, realigned, and remade. The trouble is that this has tended to make them flow faster, moving more water, more quickly and causing floods in communities downstream.

Eddleston Water frequently floods Cuddyside in Peebles, which is why it is highlighted by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) as an area of high flood risk. In 2012 the river burst its banks as many as six times after heavy rain, causing much disruption and upset to local residents.

Environment agency under fire for ‘cheating’ to dodge beach pollution

from Sunday Herald, 2 June 2013

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has been caught out turning a blind eye to pollution, making dirty beaches look clean and putting the health of thousands of holidaymakers at risk. 

The government’s pollution watchdog has been forced to drop a dodge it has deployed to avoid testing popular bathing waters for faecal contamination on days when the contamination is likely to be at its worst. 

Condemned for “cheating” by environmental campaigners, Sepa has been ordered by the Scottish environment minister, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, to correct the way it monitors for pollution this summer. 

This weekend is the start of the official bathing season during which Sepa monitors pollution from sewers and animal faeces at Scotland’s 83 officially designated beaches. Bacteria and viruses in the water can cause ear and stomach infections and, in extreme cases, can be fatal. 

Levels of contamination are meant to be within safety limits first laid down 37 years ago by European law, and due to get much tougher over the next two years. But every year bathing waters breach the limits because of sewers overflowing or waste from farm animals being washed off the land.

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.