Seafield Sewage Works

It emerged over the weekend that the Seafield Sewage works had a disastrous failure and had started pumping partially diluted sewage into the Firth of Forth at a rate of 1,000 Litres per second from Friday evening until this morning.

We’ve been campaigning for sometime to have action taken on the Seafield Stench (as readers of the blog will know). Locally the Leith Links Residents Association has been campaigning for years to have action taken on the stench. Along with Rob Gibson, Kenny MacAskill, Alyn Smith MEP and Rob Munn I’ve met representatives of the Association to hear their concerns.

Its become clear that one of the most significant problems for having the necessary improvement works carried out in the works is due to it being a PPP.

The Leith Links Resident Association have previously lobbied the Exec (successfully) for money to be made available to do improvement works on waste water plants. Edinburgh council have previously placed an abatement order on the sewage works due to the stench and it eventually went to the Water Industry Commissioner (WIC). Sadly the WIC blocked any public money going into Scottish Waters set investment plan and the upgrading the works as Seafield as it is now a PPP/PFI (run by Thames Water).

A release from Edinburgh Council on 9th August 2006 states that "Unfortunately, the WIC decided against allowing Scottish Water to fund odour resolution at the Plant because it was operated by Stirling Water on a PPP basis"

So despite the association successfully lobbying the Exec to improve odour control laws and put a small amount of funding to tackle the problem only to find that since Seafield in now a PPP they won’t see their own community benefit.

Alyn Smith MEP has raised the issue of Seafield with the European Commission before this failure and they have said they’ll keep a watching brief on the situation.

Rob Gibson tried to raise the problems at Seafield with outgoing Finance Minister Tom McCabe in February. Rob asked “How will the minister ensure that the necessary sums will be spent on Scottish Water's Seafield waste water treatment plant, which was developed using a PPP approach, to cap the obnoxious smells that affect thousands of residents of Leith and east Edinburgh? How will the Scottish Executive ensure that that happens within the current rules, which prevent public subsidies for PPP projects? When will the necessary sums be spent?“

And McCabe’s response? “The SNP might want to concentrate on smells, but the Administration is concentrating on improving Scotland and putting in place whatever innovative contract procedures are necessary to ensure that we do that.”

So Labour are more interested in putting PPP contracts in place rather than sorting out the problems at Seafield.

Earlier in the year Kenny MacAskill and Rob Gibson stated that an SNP Government would direct Scottish Water to resolve the odour problem and include the cost of the upgrading Seafield in their investment plan. If the WIC stepped in again and blocked its inclusion then we would have to consider taking the ultimate step of renegotiating the PPP contract. It's frankly unacceptable that folk in North East Edinburgh and Leith have to endure this stench for years to come because of the PPP contract.

Rob Kirkwood of the Leith Links Residents Association has told me that he has found a newspaper report from 1980 which quotes Ron Brown (former MP) saying something must be done to stop the Seafield stench. To put in perspective how long the problem has gone on I should point out I was born in 1981.

Today I joined Kenny MacAskill, Rob Kirkwood and Alex Salmond at the sewage works. Alex Salmond has committed that when he becomes First Minister that the terms of the inquiry into this latest spillage be broadened to include the issue of the works being a PPP, the stench and also previous spillages from the works that have not been so well publicised.

Other issues that will have to be looked at include the response to the failure. There are serious questions about the length of time between the failure itself and when the public was notified and how well it was publicised along the shore.

Seafield’s problems are not just those of the latest failure of the works but have been existing for years without action. It’s needed now – and sooner rather than later.