Time to turn the tide on sewage dumping scandal - Alex Cole-Hamilton

Campaigners protest against sewage discharges

I’m not alone in that pursuit; across the UK, an estimated 7.5 million of us like to take a dip in our rivers, lochs, lidos and seas.

Numbers like this don’t just demonstrate the popularity of outdoor swimming, they also do a good job of explaining why so many of us feel enraged by the festering problem of sewage.

This is an issue I hear about a lot. In Cramond locals have long complained about the impact of sewage dumping in the River Almond, with people reporting the water being discoloured and "foaming and fungus". A couple of miles away at South Queensferry, Loony Dookers splashing about on New Year’s Day stumbled through “minging” sewage pouring onto the beach from a drain.

Officially, 24,398 sewage dumps were recorded in Scotland in 2024, lasting for a staggering 208,377 hours in total. Those are frightening numbers, and it’s not hard to see the devastating impact those dumps are having.

That sounds bad enough, but a lack of data means that even those tens of thousands are likely to be an enormous underestimate.

Scottish Water, the government-owned water company responsible for sewage services across the country, previously announced that it had installed hundreds of new sewage monitors in time for 2024. But official statistics somehow show that it is providing data from fewer dumping pipes than before. That is simply not good enough. In England, 100 per cent of sewage overflows are monitored; Scotland is lagging well behind.

And even with the information available, it seems Scottish Water would rather keep that hidden away. They quietly published the yearly information on sewage dumps on an obscure corner of their website at 5pm on 31 March, without so much as a press release or post on social media. They did so on the very last day they had to publish this data under their very own official commitments.

All of this is taking place while bonuses for Scottish Water executives get hiked by over a third in just one year. That just makes it seem as if bosses are being rewarded for their abject failure to clamp down on these disgusting dumps. There’s no two ways about it: it’s time the Scottish Government finally got tough on Scottish Water.

That is why Scottish Liberal Democrats have published plans for a Clean Water Act. This would see Scotland’s Victorian network updated, every sewage dump monitored and published with binding targets for their reduction, a blue flag system for Scotland’s rivers and a complete ban on the release of sewage in protected areas such as bathing waters.

The reality is that the sewage problem affects us all. It spoils the beautiful landscapes we hold so dear, disrupts trade for local businesses and puts both our environment and health at serious risk.

The effects of climate change and increasing rainfall will only enhance the chance of sewage overflows, so ministers must stop defending outdated standards and get serious about making vital updates to the network.

The government needs to wake up to the problem before them, listen to our calls and turn the tide on this scandal.

Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western and Scottish Lib Dem leader