DANGEROUS amounts of faecal bacteria have contaminated more than a quarter of Scotland's beaches this summer because of unprecedented heavy rainfall.
Some usually pristine beaches have seen the amount of pollutants rocket to six times the safe limit as sewage pipes overflowed into the sea.
Rural beauty spots, as well as city beaches close to sewage works, are among those affected. Swimmers who
go into the highly contaminated water risk contracting salmonella or picking up streptococcus bacteria, which can cause throat and stomach infections.
Five coastal spots have already failed to live up to mandatory EU standards for clean bathing water and another 17 are on "yellow card" warnings.
The east coast of Scotland has experienced record-breaking amounts of rain this month, with 196mm of rain falling in Edinburgh in the first three weeks of August, the most for any month since records began in 1958. Dundee, Glasgow and Fife have also seen flash flooding in the past month.
The extraordinary pollution levels have been blamed on sewage pipes overflowing with rain water, as well as rain falling on agricultural fields picking up bacteria from manure and washing it into the sea.
Tom Inglis, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency's (Sepa) head of environmental protection and improvement for the north region, said: "You should be very wary of contributing all bacterial contamination to sewage. The natural load of the river will rise significantly with natural catchments from the fields, which are graced with animals' faeces and consequent bacteria. There is still some bacteria coming from sewage overflow pipes, but this is controlled. They overflow with dilute sewage and rainwater when we have extreme weather conditions."
Hundreds of beaches in England and Wales have also seen high water pollution this year, with sewage overflow pipes depositing debris such as sanitary waste and plastic bags. But only one English beach – Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent – exceeded Scotland's dirtiest beaches for bacteria.
Sepa tests levels of 10 different bacteria at 80 beaches in Scotland every fortnight during summer. A site fails if more than 2,000 bacterial colonies are found in 100ml of water. Almost all of them have fallen short of EU guidelines at least once this summer.
Last year, 11 of Scotland's beaches failed mandatory EU regulations after a wet summer. This year, five have failed and a further 17, some of which have never seen so much bacterial pollution, are close to failure.
Saltcoats beach in Ardrossan recorded the highest count of bacteria for Scotland on August 6, where more than 12,000 faecal colonies were found in 100ml of water. Sepa scientists said: "There was heavy rain (32mm] during the period before this sample was taken."
The high level of pollution on August 18 that caused Portobello beach in Edinburgh to fail was blamed on sewage pipes overflowing after heavy rain put strain on a sewage works in nearby Joppa. Portobello beach has never failed before and has been rated excellent for five of the past 10 years.
The picturesque Rosehearty beach in Aberdeenshire, popular with swimmers, windsurfers and wildlife enthusiasts, also had a clean bill of health before this year when it registered dangerous levels of faecal bacteria on two occasions in August. Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire and Sandyhills near Dalbeattie in Dumfries and Galloway have also failed to reach standards this summer.
However, Sepa bathing water expert Calum McPhail said: "Considering the wet summer and the increased number of sites from last year, this is a fairly satisfactory performance. On most days, water quality has been good or of the highest excellent quality, but clearly conditions can be affected by pollution from rainfall related wash-off from land or urban drainage."
Bacteria levels fluctuate from dangerous to almost nothing in a matter of days, in line with rainfall.
Donna Niven, of Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: "A few places, particularly on the west coast, now have real-time signage to tell you what the water quality is like that day. We need more of these, especially on the east coast, now we are experiencing stranger weather."
The full article contains 688 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
