A furious Glasgow resident has called out Scottish Water after discovering what they believe to be "foul effluent" flowing into the River Kelvin near to the Botanic Gardens.
Pat Toms spotted the "effluent" lying along the riverside yesterday near to a new Scottish Water sewage facility constructed not far from the Humpback pedestrian bridge over the river.
Photographs taken by Pat show brown matter alongside the river bank, which they say appeared in the previous 24 hours. Pat also notes that they spotted "wipes hanging off the grating at new overflow pipes".
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In a letter addressed to Scottish Water, seen by Glasgow Live, they labelled the apparent pollution caused by the new facility "worse than I can recall of any incident in the last three decades".
It read: "I walked the rough path on the river side of the railings yesterday and didn't see foul effluent. It has appeared in the last twenty four hours. The river is relatively low and flowing very slowly this morning, like yesterday.
"You are presently completing major sewer improvements. This local pollution into the river apparently from your new facility is worse than I can recall of any incident in the last three decades. Previously with high river flows manholes lifted and effluent was extruded onto footways from where it could be cleared away. There has been no high flows in the last few days.
"Please give me a technical explanation as to how your new facility has failed."
Scottish Water responded by saying that, after investigating, they believe the brown material in the river could be "some organic material" as opposed to sewage.
A Scottish Water spokesperson said: “We carried out some initial investigations and there is a brown material in part of the River Kelvin at this location. We do not believe it is sewage and think it could be some organic material.
“We have two combined sewer overflows in the area and they are working normally.
“We will carry out further investigations over the next few days, including further checks on our infrastructure. We will also seek to establish if we can clean up the affected area, regardless of what the material is.”
