Let Us Stop Pollution Of The Water Of Leith

Campaigners have recently reported continual pollution of the WOL by Scottish Water. A recent article in the Times (22 October 2024) confirms that raw sewage, including lavatory solids like wet wipes and sanitary products, are regularly removed from the water by volunteers.

An article on this website from 30 September 2020 quotes SEPA, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, after being shown a recent photograph of continuing presence of sewage algae/weed in the Dean Valley water. In this email from 5 years earlier, 2015, SEPA confirmed that they had tested the water:

There were no signs of sewage fungus or recent sewage discharge and invertebrate sampling showed there a good range of families including the pollution sensitive stoneflies and caddisflies. Two bullheads were also found in the sample.

It’s our opinion that the thick macrophyte patches are a consequence of a general nutrient enrichment and recent low flows rather than an indication of a pollution event.

However the Times article quotes David Harley, Head of Water and Planning at SEPA as saying that bacterial testing was not carried out because the WOL was “not associated with bathing water”.

The email from September 2015 indicates that SEPA were testing the water in 2015 at the request of the Public. But their management have clearly decided not to any longer. What does the word PROTECTION mean in the title of their organisation. Perhaps it means protection of jobs or Scottish Water or sewage weed, which needs nutrients from effluence to proliferate?

Perhaps SEPA do not know that both children and adults continue to paddle and swim in the WOL .It has been an ongoing past time for as long as I can remember, 60 years. So it is a nonsense for SEPA not to continue to monitor the river.

KT 23.10.24