Sewage has finally stopped pouring into the Firth of Forth, over two days after a pumping station failure. Scottish Water said the discharge had to be halted by installing emergency pumps at the Seafield plant in Leath over the weekend of 20 - 22 April 2007, which will remain in place until a full repair of the fault is carried out. As much as 100 million litres of partially diluted sewage, which is enough to fill 170 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is thought to have been discharged after the pump failure on Friday 20 April. At its peak, the sewage was pumping into the Forth at a rate of up to 1,000 litres a second.
The Thames Water run plant, treats sewage for around 800,000 people in and around Edinburgh, and the failure has led to a row over the risks to public health after people were warned to avoid contact with the water and stay away from the shoreline. Helen Lennox, Scottish Water's head of corporate affairs, apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused. She said, "This was a catastrophic failure at a pumping station and we have been working around the clock to fix it. On investigation our engineers found the repair was a much larger operation than first anticipated and we had to locate specialist pumps from other parts of the UK."
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have said that emergency measures to minimise the risk of pollution are being put in place, and have warned that the public should not come into contact with the water.
