By Mike Merritt
HUNDREDS of residents are stepping up their campaign to get “clean” drinking water brought back to parts of the Highlands after chemicals were added to the supply following changes to where it was sourced from.
Locals claim the water changed after Scottish Water opened a £24 million treatment works at Aviemore in 2012 and started taking supplies from an underground aquifer rather than the previous source, Loch Einich in the Cairngorms.
Scottish Water maintains the treatment works has improved the quality of the tap water in the area, ensuring it met all strict regulatory standards.
But it has admitted a “small number of customers” had found chlorine levels – necessary to ensure the water quality was safe – not to their taste.
Now a mother-of-two is to address the Scottish Parliament this month after saying it was “a disgrace” that so many people in the Cairngorms National Park were having to depend on bottled water because they did not trust the mains supply.
Kincraig community councillor Caroline Hayes’ campaign has echoes of environmental activist Erin Brockovich – the subject of a Hollywood film – who last year waded into a row about the quality of water in Spey Valley.
Ms Brockovich branded plans to add a cocktail of ammonia and chlorine to the drinking water of 10,000 homes a “dirty trick”.
Ms Brockovich, whose fight against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company was turned into a film starring Julia Roberts, has previously said the chemicals would not solve problems with foul smelling and irritating water faced by residents in Spey Valley.
But Scottish Water insisted its plan to put chloramine in the supply to thousands of homes will improve the situation by reducing the amount of chlorine and introducing ammonia into the water. The water supply to thousands of homes in the north has been branded so bad that even cattle and dogs do not want to drink it.
Now Mrs Hayes has won the right to address the Scottish Parliament on May 25 after her approved online petition attracted more than 200 signatures necessary.
She said: “The drinking water quality within the strath is simply terrible. For a water company to be treating the water without pre-testing does not add up. There’s a lot of people who have had health issues. I don’t drink it and haven’t for over two years.
“When they changed things for six months I had headaches and did not know what was causing them until I stopped drinking the water. The supermarket trollies in the area are full of bottled water. It is a disgrace people have to buy water in a national park full of pure water.
“Before they treated the water it was soft and beautiful.
“ It is not just human health that is being affected but the environment, tourism and Spey fisheries.
I just felt I had to do something and the petition was the way forward to get the message across to Parliament. My message will simply be ‘give us water we can drink.’ Water is essential to life.”
A Scottish Water spokesman said the organisation had received 60 calls about the water supply issue in the past two months.
He said: “We take every complaint very seriously. We want customers to enjoy the look and taste of the water and we have made adjustments to optimise the new system. It provides a better, more secure supply of water and it will allow for growth in the area and protect the natural environment of the Cairngorms.”
Peter Farrer, Chief Operating Officer at Scottish Water, also said on the company’s webite: “We would like to apologise that the taste of the water does not come up to the standard expected and also that it has taken us longer to make improvements than it should have, but I can assure customers that we are now doing everything we can to improve the taste of their water.”
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