Extreme weather led to ‘extraordinary’ year for Scottish Water, new report reveals
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It was a year of extremes for Scottish weather – including such a prolonged dry spell in the Wick area that the local distillery had to stop making whisky.
And now the country’s water and wastewater provider has acknowledged that 2021 brought one of the “most challenging and extraordinary periods” it has ever faced.
Scottish Water said the record-breaking warm and dry weather in parts of the country last summer, along with severe storms, placed its assets and employees under huge pressure – and warned that climate change will make such conditions more frequent.
Chief executive Douglas Millican said: “With my 25 years of experience in the water sector, I can honestly say the last few months have been truly extraordinary. While Covid-19 dominated our lives last year, and we’re clearly still living with the impact of the pandemic, the dominant issue of the last six months for us has been the weather.
“It was a period of record-breaking extremes that severely tested our assets, networks and teams across the country and has had an inevitable impact on our customers and the environment.”
Some of that impact was felt locally as the Scottish Environment Protection Agency rated Wick at “significant” water scarcity – the highest of five categories – for seven weeks in a row up until early September, following the town's driest summer for 66 years.
Low water levels led to the makers of Old Pulteney putting a temporary halt to production in August. It was understood to have been the first time this had happened since the summer of 1976, and it was more than a month before whisky-making could resume.
Wick Angling Association, meanwhile, called it "a disastrous year" for the river.
Mr Millican's comments came as Scottish Water published its interim Performance and Prospects report covering the six-month period from April to September 2021.
The report reveals slightly higher leakage levels resulting from the impact of freezing conditions early in 2021 and the record dry summer, and how intense storms in the summer caused localised flooding and pollution events. It also highlights how extended dry and record-breaking warm weather led to significant increases in water consumption, low water resource levels and problems in some areas with drinking water quality.
“We need to invest more – and more quickly – to replace our ageing infrastructure and make our assets more resilient to our changing climate," Mr Millican said.
“We are already developing plans to address these impacts for both water and wastewater services so we can continue to deliver high service levels to our customers. This has led to an increased need for investment, with managing flood risk to our customers one of the most substantial of these.”
He added: “We have a bold ambition to transform what we do to provide water and wastewater services in a way that makes the broadest possible contribution to the life and wellbeing of people, businesses, communities and the environment across Scotland.
“We are seeing shifts in the expectations of customers, communities and stakeholders that will require their continued support and time to fulfil. In some instances, this will mean the help of communities, including reducing their water consumption or working with us to protect our water environment.
"It will also require their support for increased levels of investment and the impact this will have on customer charges.”
Scottish Water employs around 4000 staff. Every day it delivers an average 1.53 billion litres of fresh drinking water and removes 1.08 billion litres of wastewater.
It estimates that it needs to double its investment in the next 20 years to replace ageing assets and tackle the effects of climate change.
The situation in the Wick area last year prompted the Highlands and Islands Green MSP Ariane Burgess to warn that droughts and other extreme weather events were increasing in frequency.
"It is an issue for us all, and we are starting to see the impacts closer to home," Ms Burgess said in August. "The stakes could not be higher, and we have to ensure that we are paying more than lip service to our climate commitments."
