Scottish Water has published its annual data on overflows from the public waste water system in line with regulatory requirements and the company’s commitment to sharing more information on its performance.
Scottish Water’s Improving Urban Waters Routemap, published in 2021, set out a range of areas where the utility is aiming to improve how it delivers, reports on, and explains its essential waste water handling.
Photo: newly installed CSO will help reduce flooding on the A8 Greenock
These are:
- To improve water quality
- To increase monitoring and reporting to cover all waste water overflows that discharge into the ‘highest priority’ waters
- To significantly reduce sewer-related debris in the environment
- To reduce overflows from the public sewer system
Professor Simon Parsons, Director of Environment, Planning and Assurance for Scottish Water, said:
“The quality of Scotland’s water environment remains high, with 87% of water bodies classed as good or better.
"We continue to invest in infrastructure - £500 million in addition to the £2 billion spent in the last decade – which helps improve it further to meet national targets.
“Our waste water treatment systems handle more than 1 billion litres of waste water every day and are a vital part of the water cycle in Scotland.
“The routemap we published in 2021 set out a crystal-clear commitment to invest further, monitor performance at more locations and strive to prevent pollution incidents before these happen. We are on track to deliver on those commitments.”
Scottish Water said better visibility of data and an increasing amount of data published for monitored overflows are the first steps in its commitment to better overflow management.
Scottish Water is required by regulator SEPA to report on waste water overflow data in selected assets. While there are other areas of water where the company is not required to report overflows, Scottish Water said it is choosing to do so in order to help demonstrate its transparency on this important issue.
The latest reported overflow data for 2023 covers a five-year overflow data period.
‘Non-SEPA reported’ overflow data, which was first published in December 2023, is also being updated to include 2023 data.
The water company intends to increase the number of locations for which it publishes information as new monitors are deployed.
Click here to access SEPA reported data 2019 - 2023
Click here to access non-SEPA reported data 2022-2023
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