Water supply - we “must not do anything”

An Aberdeenshire Council officer has just telephoned to talk about our private water supply, the problems we’ve had, the Private Water Supply (Scotland) Regulations 2006 and the roll-out of the grant scheme.

But it was far from a helpful conversation. In fact, it was extremely annoying.

To recap our situation. Our water supply ran dry on January 7 , 2006; after a lot of hassle the Insch fire crew refilled out 12,500 litre storage tank on 23 January, and our borehole came back on tap a month later.

When the borehole ran dry, the old borehole pump burned out and had to be replaced, while the contaminated water supplied by the fire service, while fine for washing, was not drinkable.

Since then, the flow of water from the borehole has been intermittent but with care we’ve managed to get by although we still don’t have drinking water although I’m about to fit a UV filter system myself - not least because the new Scottish Executive funded grant scheme won’t become available for some months.

And now to today’s telephone conversation.

After telling me that it would be at least a year before Aberdeenshire Council’s staff are trained to implement the new regulations and grant scheme, the council officer warned me that we are not permitted to carry out any improvements or changes to our water supply until the council has done a risk assessment, made recommendations for improvements and then approved the improvements.

Of course, that means putting up with a defective water supply throughout the time it takes for the council to get its act together.

When I pointed out that we’ve already had serious problems for a year, the council officer said it was all very well for the Scottish Executive to pass new regulation, it’s another thing for it to be implemented on the ground. (Strangely, although the regulations have been in the pipeline for a couple of years, the council doesn’t seem to have thought it worth getting its act together before the regulations came into effect!)

Anyway, the council has learned we put a new borehole pump in (months ago as it happens) and I was warned that we may be required to remove it as the council risk assessment had not been carried out and may make different recommendations.

I pointed out that the old pump had burned out when the borehole ran dry, so we’d had to replace it or we’d be getting no water out of the borehole. Apparently, that’s irrelevant.

So, what are we supposed to do? Have no water supply until the council gets its act together?

I’m also not allowed to put in any filtration systems, connect or remove troughs to or from the water supply, use a rainwater harvesting system, etc.

All this now has to be risk assessed, recommendations made and plans approved.

To add insult to injury, while the council’s risk assessment and recommendations may well add to up to thousands of pounds, the new grant scheme is capped at £800. (The old scheme, which we just missed out on when the council closed it early, was capped at £20,000.)

From what the council officer said, it appears than anyone with a private water supply in Aberdeenshire will be in the same boat. The council will check all private supplies, assess them and recommend improvements that you will have to implement, largely at the landowners’ expense.

All very well if you have deep pockets, but a huge burden if you have minimal financial means of paying for the improvements.

And yes, we’re well aware of the need for a clean and reliable water supply - after all, we’re the people living with the problems day in, day out. But bureacratic impositions like this are the last thing we need.

What are we going to do? We’ll continue to maintain and improve our water supply to ensure we have clean water available and continue to fight the apparachniks as best we can.

I’m also going to read the regulations in detail, as I suspect the council’s interpretation goes further than intended.

I already know that under The Private Water Supplies (Grants) (Scotland) Regulations 2006 a grant can be made in excess of £800: “A local authority may pay to an eligible person a grant in excess of £800 where satisfied that the eligible person could not, without undue hardship, finance the expense of the approved works without such a grant.”

Needless to say, this is not pointed out to people and is not mentioned on the Scottish Executive’s private water supply website when it details the Grant Scheme.

Anyway, I’m off to fume, do some more research and then get back to the real work of crofting.