By Bill Heaney
Scottish Water, whose ever increasing charges are included with West Dunbartonshire Council council tax demands for payment, joined the long list of public companies and councils accused of cover-ups.
Despite a programme of installing new monitors, with 272 additional monitors installed in time for 2024, Scottish Water provided annual data for fewer overflows last year.
Across this group of overflows, there were 24,398 sewage dumps recorded in 2024, which lasted for a staggering 208,377 hours.
Scottish Water quietly published this data on an obscure corner of their website at 5pm on 31st March without a press release, the very last day to publish this data under the Improving Urban Waters Routemap.
Scottish Liberal Democrats have announced plans for a Clean Water Act which would see:
- Scotland’s Victorian sewage network updated;
- Every sewage dump monitored and published with binding targets for their reduction;
- A blue flag system for Scotland’s rivers;
- A complete ban on the release of sewage in protected areas such as bathing waters.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “Scottish Water proudly announced it had installed hundreds of new sewage monitors in time for 2024, but in the official statistics it is providing data from fewer overflows than before.
“24,398 sewage dumps is bad enough but as a result of the lack of data it will be an underestimate. In England 100% of sewage overflows are monitored, whereas Scotland is lagging badly behind.
“People can see the impact of sewage dumping on their local beaches and in their local rivers and lochs. They deserve to know the full picture about this disgusting practice.
“Scottish Water bosses are getting eye watering bonuses while presiding over outdated sewage standards. The Scottish Government needs to get serious about providing transparency on sewage.
“To turn the tide on this scandal, Scottish Liberal Democrats have published plans for a Clean Water Act that would see a clamp down on discharges and get to the bottom of this disgusting practice.”
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The figures have been published here.
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The figure of 24,398 spills combines the data from the reported, and non-reported spreadsheets, which cover different overflows.
Scottish Water say that “Additional overflows with new EDM monitors installed as part of our Improving Urban Waters investment programme will not be added until a full year’s data is available. We continue to install further new monitors and these will be added in future years.“
However, it was announced at the end of 2023 that 272 new monitors had been fitted (reported by the BBC), and thus would have been installed for the entirety of 2024, yet the number of overflows for which data has been provided has decreased instead.
In December 2024, Scottish Water published a real time sewage overflow map, containing new overflows, however this map only provides a 48-hour snapshot, not full annual reporting.
Scottish Water said in the 2024 update to the Improving Urban Waters Routemap “we will continue to update annual overflow event data in March each year.“