Loo closure creates new toxic scourge at Sandside
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A FAR north coast beach notorious for its radioactive contamination is now blighted with a new form of toxic waste of the human kind.
Sandside resident Sue Thompson claims Highland Council is throwing the far north’s surfing and tourism legacy down the sewer due to a lack of year-round toilet facilities which is causing surfers and others to ‘deposit’ in the dunes.
Sue, who works at the nearby Dounreay site, said the winter surfing mecca of Sandside beach is being ruined through the local authority’s "third world" policy of closing the toilets over the winter.
"The waves are naturally at their best during the winter, which is exactly when the council in their wisdom decide to shut the toilets at the beach," she said.
"This leaves the surfers nowhere to ‘go’ but in the dunes behind the closed toilets and more recently, behind one of the houses on the harbour itself.
"Surfing in Caithness will only increase in popularity as adventure tourism becomes more established up here and I hate to think what foreign surfers must think when they arrive here and find the toilets shut."
The council claim that in common with the majority of local authority-run public conveniences, those at Sandside have always operated seasonally – opening between April and September. Opening them out of season is not feasible according to a council spokeswoman.
"The toilets were not designed to be open all year round and do not have enough frost protection to last the winter," said the spokeswoman.
"So there is the risk of burst pipes and flooding damage if the water is not turned off at the end of the season."
But Mrs Thompson points out that facilities at other popular British surfing spots such as in Devon and Cornwall are open year round and argues that closing the toilets is creating a health hazard as well as doing the tourism industry a disservice.
The beach is more used to waste of another kind – with several hundreds grain-sized particles of reprocessed nuclear fuel having been recovered from the beauty spot over the past two and half decades.
The local authority is now spoiling everyone’s enjoyment of the scenic spot, according to Mrs Thompson.
She claims dog walkers, tourists and residents are all being negatively affected by the menace. Of prime concern to her is the health risks associated with coming into contact with the human waste.
She regularly takes her three dogs along the beach and often has to clean them when they come across faeces.
Worryingly, she said, youngsters enjoying a day at the seaside could be adversely affected.
"Children could find this or people come down looking to use the advertised toilets, and of course you have all the surfers of which we get more and more every year," she said.
"If my dogs find something, roll in it and then I become contaminated with something, then I would sue them.
"The council’s duty of care towards me is being breached."
The problem is not a new one – a couple of years ago Mrs Thompson asked the council to open the toilets over the winter so that surfers and others who enjoy the beach would have facilities to use.
She said the council declined on the grounds that they could not afford to keep them open. This is unacceptable for Mrs Thompson, who has lived by the harbour for the past 10 years.
"The council just spent a fortune on those new flash toilets in Thurso," she said. "Even if they charged 20p to cover the costs, all they have to do is lag the pipes – how difficult can it be?"
She sympathises with the surfers and others who get caught short and believes the problem must be tackled if tourism in Caithness is to get a boost.
"If we want to increase adventure tourism up here we have to provide some facilities however basic they are," she said.
"It’s just disgraceful."
