Inveraray flood self-inflicted

The underlying cause of Sunday’s (11th January)  flooding in Inveraray reported on by For Argyll has been laid directly on the townsfolk themselves.

Scottish Water’s Customer Operations Team Manager, Stephen Griffen, says: ‘This is a serious problem and we believe that the accumulation of fat, oil and grease and other waste in our system is responsible for this recent flooding’.

Scottish Water is appealing to people and hospitality businesses in the Inveraray area to dispose of fat, oil and grease and other domestic waste carefully following this and an earlier Christmas flooding in the village.

Parts of the road in Main Street were flooded with waste water and Scottish Water suffered operational difficulties in the village during the festive period and again last weekend.

The company investigated the flooding during the festive period and discovered that there had been a choke in their pipework caused by a large accumulation of fat, oil and grease and other domestic waste such as sanitary waste.

After engineers cleared the choke at Christmas, Scottish Water discovered that the blockage had caused damage to two pumping stations in Pier Road and Main Street. These take waste water to the Inveraray Waste Water Treatment Works. This damage also led to waste water being spilled via a storm overflow into the waters of Loch Fyne.

On Sunday a combination of heavy rainfall and yet more fat, oil and grease passing through the system put additional pressure on the pumps at the Pier Road Pumping Station. The pumps were unable to operate and a relief valve, which should have opened to prevent flooding, was unable to do so because it was blocked with fat, oil and grease.

As part of its advice and encouragement of local people to help the company tackle the problem of fat, oil and grease in the local network, Scottish Water will shortly be contacting hotels and restaurants to advise them how best to dispose of such substances.

Alongside this, the company is reminding everyone that sanitary waste and products like baby wipes and cotton buds are tougher than normal toilet paper. These and similar items should always be bagged and binned – never flushed. They can block sewer pipes, causing insanitary flooding in people’s homes and streets. They cause problems at treatment works, which in turn puts the local environment at risk. And in blocking pipes in houses and from houses to the main sewers, they cost householders themselves a lot of money to put right.

Below are some interesting facts and ‘what to do’ advice from Scottish Water.

FAT – THE FACTS

• Fat is responsible for 55% of all sewer blockages. Many of these result in pollution or flooding.
• Fats, oils and greases are a major cause of operational problems for Scottish Water.
• Fat blockages cause pollution, flooding, public health hazards and have major clean up costs.
• Cleaning a fat clogged pumping station can cost as much as £20,000.
• Fat in sewage creates biological foam which impairs the ability of modern treatment works.
• Cooking fat and oil should be put into a container and disposed of with other household waste.
• There are specialist collection companies who can take away large quantities of fat and recycle it to make bio diesel fuel.
• Saturated fat causes the most problems. This is animal fat which goes hard when it cools.
• Mono-unsaturated fats such as olive oil and rapeseed solidify when refrigerated so can caused problems in sewers in cold weather.

SANITARY WASTE – WHAT CAN BE FLUSHED

• Human waste
• Toilet paper (not too much and not the moist, extra strong type)

WHAT SHOULD NOT BE FLUSHED BUT BAGGED AND BINNED INSTEAD

• Sanitary items: towels, tampons, applicators, panty liners, backing strips, etc.
• Disposable nappies, liners and baby wipes
• All wipes, including baby, bathroom and toilet
• Incontinence pads, condoms and femidoms
• Colostomy bags, bandages and plasters
• Cotton buds, cotton wool, contact lenses and toothbrushes

Photograph of Inveraray above is by Paul Hadfield, Creative Commons.