On 20 February, Liberal Democrats Leader Sir Ed Davey joined the Surfers Against Sewage group at Portobello Beach, calling for better sewage monitoring in Scotland.
Davey stated: “In Scotland, there were more than 24,000 sewage dumps recorded in 2024, but the difference is that unlike England, Scotland still only monitors a fraction of the sites where sewage is dumped so the true picture is likely even worse.”
He continued: “[Edinburgh ministers] don’t seem to care that the government-owned water company dumps millions of litres of sewage throughout our rivers, lochs and beaches.”
“In Scotland we want to see a new Clean Water Act to take the sewage scandal seriously, track down and report every sewage dump, and replace outdated standards with modern and enforceable regulation.”
Climate Action Secretary Gillian Martin said: “97 per cent of Scotland’s bathing waters achieve the bathing water quality standard, with 82 per cent rated good or excellent. The water quality in our rivers and lochs is also improving with 86 per cent of Scotland’s entire water environment assessed by Sepa as having a ‘high’ or ‘good’ classification—up from 82 per cent in 2014.”
For the 2026 bathing season the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) classified Portobello (Central) as having ‘Sufficient’ water quality on a scale from Poor to Excellent. Here bathing is not advised 1-2 days after heavy rainfall due to the risk to bathers’ health from water pollution.
One second year student told The Student: “It’s good that they are working on it [sewage monitoring] obviously, but I just can’t help but think whatever they do will just be made redundant by inevitable further pollution.”
Image by Eve Robertson for The Student.