By Bill Heaney
In Dumbarton and Vale of Leven, we all know what landfill means …
It’s filthy brown-coloured sludge seeping out from the old Havoc dump into the Clyde and on to the walkway along the Clydeshore.
It is where families from Castlehill, Brucehill and Westcliff used to go for summer picnics.
Until the sludge and the smell from the overspill from the Scottish Water sewage at Ardoch became unbearable.
And put the popular walk between Clerkhill, the “Skittery Wids” and the Scottish Rocks out of bounds for local people who want to keep their olfactory equipment healthy.
They have similar problems in the Vale, where the filth seeps underground and flows down the the hills behind Haldane and Jamestown into the once salmon-rich River Leven at Bonhill.
And all the while the huge foul-smelling “scat ships” rock ‘n’ roll down the A82 and along the back road to Strathleven from the old Dalmuir sewage works to what was once the beautiful Vale of song and story.
If they knew the background to this even Flamingo Land might want to come nowhere near the place.
Scottish Liberal Democrat climate emergency spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP has pressed John Swinney on reports that 100 truckloads of waste will be moved over the border to England daily once a landfill ban comes into place at the end of the year.
Speaking at First Minister’s Question Time, Mr McArthur asked the First Minister to explain to the chamber how the Scottish Government would respond if the UK government was dumping English waste in Scotland.
Mr McArthur, left, said: “There is a clear double standard here and the First Minister knows it. If the UK government was proposing to dump truckloads of waste from England over the Scottish border the SNP would be up in arms.
“The First Minister was unable to offer a justification for these plans, because there isn’t one. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have been pushing for the government to respond to these risks for years now, and it is clear these warnings have gone unheeded by former SNP and Green ministers alike.
“Despite having years and years of notice, there has been a clear failure by the government to plan for this ban. Let’s be clear – this is an environmentally harmful outcome which absolutely undermines the government’s credibility.”
So what was Me Swinney’s reply to the question?