Residents cause a stink over scheme for sewage disposal
SCOTTISH Water’s plans to pump sewage from Seil into a conservation area at Easdale Bay will contravene European law, island campaigners have claimed.
At Seil and Easdale’s most recent community council meeting, The Seaview Residents group outside Ellenabeich accused Scottish Water (SW) of wasting £11 million of taxpayers’ money on the ‘badly designed and built’ Clachan Seil Waste Water Treatment Works at Balvicar, installed in 2008 against the community’s wishes.
The membrane plant, unable to separate run- off from heavy rain, has been causing an overflow of untreated human waste into Balvicar Bay.
Scotland’s environmental regulator SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) has been reviewing ‘the high frequency of spills from the combined sewer overflow’.
And SW has acknowledged the plant is ‘currently not able to consistently treat all the waste water flowing into it’, attributing it to ‘membrane fouling, over- optimistic design filtration and freshwater ingress’.
The Seaview Residents group said Scottish Water’s spillage data from 2012-14 ‘makes disturbing reading’, citing 365 spillage events in 2014 alone, far above the 1.6 predicted each year.
Last year, according to SW’s annual January report to SEPA, records ceased due to ‘telemetry signal issues’ from January 1 to August 8, after which the plant overflowed untreated sewage 41 per cent of the time.
‘So by poor design or incompetence,’ the group added, ‘Scottish Water has succeeded concentrating raw sewage from 160-plus properties into the most significant shellfish growing area of Seil Sound.’
The Seaview Residents group is ‘totally opposed’ to SW’s ‘£1.8 million’ holistic solution to turn the Clachan/ Balvicar plant into
Waters of the shoreline around Easdale will be polluted”
a pumping station, and pipe raw sewage over the 50m high hill to a new septic tank at Seaview Terrace, then out into Easdale Bay, which is a Marine Protected Area and a Special Area of Conservation. More than 50 per cent of Seil’s adult population signed a petition against the idea last year.
‘As freshwater floats, with the prevailing winds, the waters of the shoreline around Easdale will be polluted,’ they wrote, quoting one resident who called it ‘ breathtaking in its ineptitude’.
Seaview resident Jean Ainslie argued untreated sewage would still spill into the bay, and be vaporised by storms, blowing it on to roads, gardens and fields where livestock feed. ‘They are looking at the cheapest and nastiest solution,’ she told The Oban Times. At the last community council meeting, Ms Ainslie, the group’s spokesperson, argued a UV treatment plant would cause minimal disruption and remove the need to pump sewage over the hill. She added: ‘ We believe if Scottish Water pushes ahead with its original proposal to pump poorly-treated sewage into the Special Area of Conservation, it will be in breach of European directives and it may be necessary to take a complaint to Europe to stop this.’
Scottish Water said it is studying alternatives. When asked what and where its other options were, and when investigations would begin, it responded: ‘ We are currently developing a project to meet European directive requirements for waste water treatment at Seaview Terrace.
‘At the same time, we are looking at options to address performance issues at the current treatment works at Balvicar, with a focus to ensure we deliver compliant and sustainable waste water services for customers on Seil. This project remains at a relatively early stage and we are currently carrying out investigation work.’
SW also invited community councillors and Argyll and Bute councillors to join a stakeholder group, chaired by Michael Russell MSP, with ‘an independent expert’, who those at the meeting discussed appointing themselves. But SW responded: ‘We will be appointing an external independent expert to help guide thinking and provide additional reassurance as part of this stakeholder group.’
A community information event will also be announced soon.