Established 1861 No 8216

The news that a £11.7 million project to protect Easdale Bay, an area of the Argyll coast known for its shellfish, is being compromised by the sheer volume of sewage ‘overspills’ is something that needs urgent attention.

Not least because the problem has been going on for eight years without a viable solution being found. How can that be?

Now more than half the population on the island of Seil have signed a petition against a further proposal from Scottish Water, which would see it abandoning some of the original scheme to pump raw sewage over a hill and release it barely treated into the bay - an area known for its dolphins.

The islanders claim to have figures that show the number of spillages has risen from 20 in 2013 to a staggering 365 in 2014. That is set against Scottish Water Solutions (SWS) predicting that spill frequencies would only be 1.6 per year.

There is clearly an issue, but is it with SWS’s predictions, or with the system that was installed to deal with the waste?

Scottish Water says it is currently developing a project to meet European Directive requirements for wastewater treatment on the island.

Having known about the problem for the last eight years, one would hope Scottish Water has been working on a solution for some time and that it doesn’t take too long to put a workable plan in place, one that is sustainable and has the ability to reduce any spillages to the level SWS predicted when the project was first established in 2008.