After Portobello beach water quality scare, why swimmers keep coming

The Herald Scotland

18 hours ago

But standing next to the sign towards the west end of Portobello beach promenade, Charlie Allanson-Oddy points out the small print in a sign just below the electronic notice. 'Advice against bathing,' it says, 'was issued on 37 days during the 2024 bathing season.'
'But that bathing season,' he observes, 'from June to September is only about 100 days, so that 37 is over a third.'
Allanson-Oddy is not a wild swimmer but a surfer, a member of Surfers Against Sewage, and also the founder of a citizen science group that has been testing the water for themselves over the past two years. He guides me to the spot at which they take their samples is where the waters of the Figgate Burn spill onto the beach, trickling seductively over the sands and into the sea.
'There's a combined sewage overflow (CSO) just a few hundred metres up the burn,' he says, as he dips a metal flask, on the end of a stick into the stream.
A CSO is a point in the system where, when heavy rain washes in off streets and drains, the contents of the sewer is released to prevent backing up into homes.
'In theory this test," he observes, "should be fine since there has been no rain for a long time. But what we have learned from our testing is that there are consistently high levels of E. coli in the Figgate burn. What that actually means about swimming in the sea here, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't want to swim in or around the area. I would swim further up the beach.'
Porty Water Collective volunteers collected samples regularly between July 2023 and April 2024. 21 out of their 26 tests found unsafe levels of E. coli – over 400 per 1000mg of colony forming units (CFUs).
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'The last thing,' he says, 'we want to do is scare people, put them off. We're actually trying to do the opposite and make the water cleaner so more of us can get in and enjoy it. It lifts the spirits and does all sorts of wonderful things for us – even just being by the sea.'
'Why can't we have real-time monitoring of water quality?' he adds. 'Or something that says, 'It's been raining, don't go in.' Also bathing season is so short. People are in all seasons of the year. Some of the worst rains come outside of the season, and people are in there.'
Last year was not the best year at Porty, as locals affectionately call our beach. Sampling, as part of SEPA's weekly testing according to their data, revealed, in early July, an E coli level of 1200 CFU at the east end of the beach.
The July sample – though notably not the worst in the year - triggered a dramatic response. Notices were put up on the beach warning people not to swim. 'Water pollution incident,' the sign said. 'Please avoid bathing or paddling until further notice.' The thrumming beach of Scotland's busy capital, home to a wild swimming community, whose Facebook group, The Wild Ones, with over 7000 members, and a magnet for on the kind of sunny weekends of the past May, was closed briefly to dippers.
Allanson-Oddy recalls: 'They never really found out what it was. And people were left feeling like this was some version of Jaws, is it really safe to get back in the water again? I don't remember another event like that when suddenly people were being told don't go into the water.'
Charlie Allanson-Oddy tests the Figgate Burn (Image: Herald&Times_GordonTerris)
A report was issued by SEPA which suggested that the contamination could have been dog or gull poo, and was probably not sewage. Vicki White, SEPA Senior Manager in Environmental Performance reassured: 'The fact that a follow-up sample taken on Thursday 11th July showed water quality was already back to normal indicates this was a short-lived event that had no lasting impact.
'Microbial source tracking can be very helpful in identifying a source, but in this case our analysis of this one sample has not been able to identify one. However, these results - combined with the fact our officers found no issues when we checked Scottish Water assets in the area - does indicate that this was not a sewage related incident."
But this was not the only reading in the year that was shockingly high. Another followed much later in the season when on Monday, September 2, a sample at Portobello Central tested at 2600 CFU E Coli, almost twice as bad.
In Scotland last year, only Fisherrow Sands saw a worse E coli reading than that 2600 at Portobello – a shocking 10,000 in July, and Portobello itself has not seen a reading this high since July 2017 when an 8,800 sample was taken.
Charlie Allanson-Oddy overlooking Portobello beach by the Figgate Burn (Image: Herald&Times_GordonTerris) Jo Myles, a former daily swimmer, who started dipping during the pandemic during her recovery from breast cancer, and started up a vibrant swim group, tells me how the shock of those July signs last year made her cut back her swimming.
'I've known from years of swimming at Portobello that there was days when there was nasties. There were days when you just thought what the hell is that! But it was the fact that they did put up an official warning that has massively set back my swimming weekly routine because it went from feeling like I was doing something healthy to potentially doing something unhealthy. The fact that it was verified that was the gamechanger.'
Till then, she says, she felt blissfully unaware. 'We kind of knew, but it was oh well, ignorance is bliss – we were turning a bit of a blind eye. So when it went up and it was official it kind of put me off. I started going to the gym on a Friday.'
Lately, however, she says she has been back in the water. 'Things have gone a bit quiet on the pollution side of things – when I went in last Friday, it was crystal clear and beautiful and that filled me with a lot of joy.'
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That Portobello beach doesn't have the very cleanest waters has been known for a while. Its two testing sites, Portobello Central and Portobello West, have long had a bathing waters classification of merely 'sufficient'. In terms of ratings it beats only Fisherrow Sands, Kinghorn Harbour Beach and Lower Largo, which are all poor.
'That sufficient it rates at is not that good,' says Allanson-Oddy. 'It's a bare minimum pass.'
As the author of numerous books about wild swimming, including an upcoming anthology of literary writing on the subject, Take Me to the River, I have covered its rise in popularity, and I can say, with confidence Portobello is one of the birth places of contemporary wild swimming culture. Yet, since 2018 when I first started writing about it, and throughout all the years of swimmers making noise, its water quality has improved little. In terms of rating – with only one year of it ever being 'good'.
On International Women's Day each year, crowds take a dook at Portobello BeachThis feeling I have of little progress is something Allanson-Oddy echoes. 'One of the things that I have been thinking about in our fourth year of testing here with Surfers against Sewage, and recently the Porty Water Collective, is that I am not aware of any particular differences that have been made by Scottish Water. It just seems the same. Their promise for 2024 was to increase the number of testing points on CSOs, because only 4% in Scotland were monitored. But even if this is happening, the question that always comes to mind is that that's just going to prove what we already know.'
Last month the Labour MP for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh raised a question on sewage spills in parliament. Murray believes that two issues are driving the problem: 'population growth along with changes in climate'.
'There's more rain,' he says, 'more abruptly, and the system can get overwhelmed and what that means is that it overflows quite a lot and what you end up with is sewage washing out into the water.'
That sewage is, however, mostly diluted by the large quantities of water from the downpour.
One issue often raised is whether Scotland is better than England, with Scottish Water often praised for being publicly owned, rather than the multiple private companies that operate across England and Wales.
Murray describes the situation in England where private water companies run the system and 'make profits' as "totally awful". But he also notes that, though publicly owned, Scotland's water system is not monitored very well. 'The only reason we really know that this is happening is because volunteers are finding loads of wet wipes and sanitary towels on the beach and obviously those are a proxy for the human sewage that is out there. So the issue is not just that we've got a problem in Scotland it's that we don't know the scale of the problem because we're not properly monitoring it.'
Portobello beach on a busy day (Image: Gordon Terris)This criticism over monitoring is something that Scottish Water has already begun responding to. Through its Improving Urban Waters programme, a £500m package of additional investment to improve water quality through increased monitoring and reporting, and targeted infrastructure projects to significantly reducing sewer-related debris and spills. A Scottish Water Overflow map also publishes status of some of these CSOs. One of them is on the Figgate Burn, another at the east end of Portobello.
But nevertheless, Murray says, 'I'm really frustrated by their quite lackadaisical attitude to things. It's all very much like nothing to see here, everything's fine.'
It's one thing monitoring, however – the bigger question is how the system is actually improving. Scottish Water is, it says, currently developing a fully appraised strategic and costed plan for the sewerage and treatment system in Edinburgh and the wider Lothians. But the plan is likely not to be fully developed for a few years, and it's only then that the interventions will be delivered.
Swimming in the sea at the edge of my city has made me obsessed with how it manages its sewage. At the heart of Edinburgh's system is Seafield sewage treatment centre, Scotland's largest wastewater treatment facility, processing 265 million litres of wastewater daily and serving nearly 850,000 people in the capital and the wider Lothians.
I once even went for a tour of it, and it's actually beneath this treatment centre that I swim most Sundays, at the Seafield end of Portobello Beach, a relatively wild spot, edged by dog roses, often visited by oystercatchers and, and relatively quiet – no doubt in part due to the infrastructure which rises above it.
A crowd of swimmers on the beach on International Women's Day
Currently Seafield is financed, designed, built, owned, operated, and maintained by Stirling Water Ltd under the Almond Valley Seafield and Esk Private Finance Initiative. Stirling Water subcontracts the operation and maintenance to Veolia Water Outsourcing Ltd and Scottish Water oversees the facility and collaborates with both Stirling Water and Veolia to ensure performance and compliance with environmental standards.
The long-term plan, however, is for the transition of the treatment plant back into Scottish Water ownership as part of what the water company describes as 'a broader strategy to bring PFI assets under direct control', with the expectation that this will enhance operational efficiency and align the facility more closely with Scottish Water's long-term strategic goals.
The transition is scheduled to be completed by 2032 after the contract expires in 2029.
In recent years significant investments, of £34m since 2011, have been made to modernise the facility. However it still has its problems – not least for those of us who live in Leith, the pong that it emits on warm days. Though further small investments are planned including measures to move sludge through the site more quickly, which will help reduce the risk of odours, there is no provision within the current delivery plan to carry out any significant investment apart from base maintenance. The earliest point at which Scottish Water may potentially invest and enhance Seafield would be 2033.
Vicky Allan after a swim at Portobello (Image: Herald&Times_GordonTerris)
But modernising Seafield is just one small part of evolving the sewage system cope with an Edinburgh that faces both rapidly growing population and the more extreme rains of climate change. One way of preventing sewage overflow in a growing city is by removing surface water from the sewer network, and there are plans to manage this through what's called 'blue-green' infrastructure. A pilot, for instance, is being developed collaboratively with City of Edinburgh Council in the Craigleith catchment to demonstrate a range of such interventions.
Following the closure of Portobello beach last year, Murray wrote to the Scottish Government asking what was going on. 'They essentially,' he recalls, 'said, well, we think it's seagull poo and dog poo. But my question is, 'Where are the wet wipes coming from then?''
Like Murray, I'm aware of sewage more through the arrival of wipes and sanitary towels on the sands as I am. A floating pad is enough to make me swim 'heads up' as we swimmers call it, in a bid to stop water entering facial orifices
"People swim in there all the time,' says Murray. 'It's really important to get it right. But also the beach has become massive for the local economy and we don't want this kind of issue to develop. We need to nip it in the bud. The issue with sewage and water is that swimmers get sick, children get sick, animals get sick. I'm just frustrated at the dismissiveness of their response.'
But swimmers themselves are often sanguine about the sewage and keen not to let the threat of bacteria get between them and the water. They are mostly aware of the flaws of the sewage system and how it functions. They don't expect it to suddenly come with a no-spill guarantee.
Lynne Carter, an all-year-round swimmer at the beach, says, 'Water quality scares last year did stop me swimming for a while at Porty and I swam elsewhere. But as soon as the alerts stopped, I was straight back in. I'd love the water quality to be high all the time, but I don't think that's realistic for a city beach.
'I'm unlikely to swim if it's 'poor' but above that and I'm ok. I wouldn't dunk if the quality isn't great and definitely keep my mouth closed. With no water quality tests outwith summer swimming season, I just judge the water myself. In the summer I check the SEPA website if in doubt (eg after a lot of rain or if I hear any alerts from local folk).'
She has, she says, never been ill after a swim.
Nor have I, though I know a few people who have, and I'm aware of friends who are cautious around when they swim because of lowered immune system.
Research is growing, meanwhile, into the impact of sewage on swimmer and public health. Over the past year, a project at the University of Edinburgh, Beyond the Flush, has been surveying Portobello swimmers and raising awareness around the way faecally polluted freshwater environments, such as rivers, could be a key source of the microbes, genes, and contaminants that promote bacterial resistance to antiobiotics – what are often termed 'superbugs'.
Increased human activity, waste production and sewage overflows, from densely populated urban areas can cause water bodies, the Beyond the Flush website explains, to become 'potential reservoirs for antibiotic resistance genes'.
'Wild swimmers who come into contact with these contaminated waters risk exposure to difficult-to-treat infections.'
But on Portobello beach, as it happens the sewage isn't what is bothering the swimmers right now as the weather shifts from hot and dry to wet. Rather, it's the giant red blobs arriving on the sands and drifting in the waters. News that lion's mane jellyfish, which pack a dangerous sting, are back has made swimmers hold back or reach for their wetsuits.
Though down at Porty it takes a lot to keep us out of the water for long.