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As the Met Office warns of climate change due to UK weather hitting record levels, we saw for ourselves torrential rainfall on 4th July causing peakflow flooding and YES yet another spillage of raw sewage into the River Almond! RAAG members evidenced toilet trash spewing out of the East Calder Wastewater Treatment Works outfall. A fallen tree across the river acted as a filter and was left decorated with ‘rag’ the sewage industry term for the non dis-solvable items that are put down a toilet. This includes wet wipes, sanitary protection, toothpicks and cotton buds. All these items were found on the ‘toilet tinsel tree’ by RAAG members when they met with a Veolia representative to voice their concerns. This video shows to a small extent what was seen. A protest was left at the Violia Waste Water Treatment Plant at East Calder. RAAG welcomed the clean up organised by Veolia 10 days after the spill. The Veolia clean up eventually collected 65 bags of ‘rag’. Veolia also discussed ways in which they could improve communications with RAAG and the local community and to widen understanding of what happens to our sewage in West Lothian. |
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On 24th July, Forth Rivers Trust and RAAG were in Almondell supporting the Bathing Waters Status Application. They had an information stand on the Nasmyth Bridge encouraging people to use the QR code to link to the Forth Rivers Trust site and complete a SURVEY to provide evidence of how people use the River. It is hoped this will show how important the River is to local people. This attracted support from local people as well as Councillors and the press. There were over 60 people in the area and some people took to the water in a River Splash, highlighting the need for this area to be designated safe and clean. This Bathing Waters Application is the first in Scotland for inland waters and if successful will bring finance and resources into the area to improve water quality and make the river safe to use for humans and wildlife. All this activity has boosted the RAAG Facebook Group membership to 1030 with the site being viewed 10.6k times. _________________________________________________ WLC River Almond debris webpage to download a Scottish Water reporting form. |
