Scottish Water caught with non-compliant sewages sites more than 250 times
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today called on the Scottish Government to get serious about sewage dumping after new analysis revealed sewage sites run by Scottish Water had been found to be non-compliant with their licenses 254 times in just three years.
A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request to the environmental regulator SEPA revealed that 35.2% of inspections at Scottish Water sewerage assets since 2022 found instances of non-compliance with the conditions of their licence.
The Helensburgh (Ardmore) Sewage Treatment Works was one of the sites found to be non-compliant with the conditions of its licence. SEPA's inspection at the site found a faulty flow recorder which was providing a false reading, and that sewage was being dumped outside of periods of rainfall or snowmelt which were set out in its licence, i.e. on dry weather days. There were 1,722 sewage dumps at the Helensburgh site. By contrast the site with the most dumps in England was Salcombe Regis in Devon with 366 spills.
Sewage dumping on dry weather days is considered to be more environmentally damaging as it will not have been diluted by rainfall.
Scottish Liberal Democrats recently revealed that more than 2,000 complaints about sewage have been made to the environmental regulator since 2022.
Alex Cole-Hamilton said:
"These figures show that in the last 3 years alone, a third of SEPA investigations have caught Scottish Water breaking their licence conditions.
"One inspection in Helensburgh found faulty equipment and examples of environmentally damaging dry weather sewage dumping.
"The Scottish Government needs to start finally taking the sewage crisis seriously and get tough on the government owned water company.
"Earlier this month, Thames Water got fined £100 million for sewage dumping, but there are never any consequences here in Scotland. Perhaps that is because ministers know that it is actually their government that’s at fault for this problem.
"To turn the tide on the sewage scandal, Scottish Liberal Democrats have published plans for a Clean Water Act that would bring our sewage network into the 21st century, clamp down on dumping and get to the bottom of this disgusting practice."