Campaign led to £50m water treatment move

IN regard to recent completion of the £50m water treatment scheme at Scarborough, intended to achieve compliance with the requirements of the revised EU Bathing Water Directive of 2015, the simple plain truth is that this major capital investment has been all of 30 years in the making.

Its provenance lays in the tireless campaigning of The Sons Of Neptune for safe bathing waters. The directive’s objective is to protect both public health and the environment from pollution in our bathing waters, precisely the exact same aims initially advocated by the Neptune organisation as far back as 1983.

Predating Surfers Against Sewage by several years, Yorkshire’s Neptune group were the UK’s pioneering marine conservation organisation in campaigning against the odious institutionalised practice of dumping of raw, untreated sewage into British inshore waters. The Sons Of Neptune should be accredited fully for not only their visionary role in instigating this enormously important prime development for Scarborough, but in also attaining fundamental changes to EU laws that propelled and continues to propel this enlightened approach to marine sewage disposal.