Rob Edwards

Lomond park board member forced to resign over gold shares

from The National, 14 September 2015

Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park has been branded an “embarrassment to Scotland” after one of its leading members was forced to resign from the park board for failing to declare shares in a £200 million gold mining company.

Owen McKee, who bought shares for £12,000 in the Australian company Scotgold after it was given permission to dig for gold at Cononish near Tyndrum in the park, has triggered a by-election next month by standing down as an elected member of the board. He had previously sold his shares and resigned as vice-convener and chair of the planning committee, but remained a member of the board.

Our sister paper the Sunday Herald revealed in August that McKee breached the park’s code of conduct by failing to declare his shareholding at 15 meetings over more than two years. It has emerged that two days after the story appeared, he wrote a letter resigning from the park board “in the light of recent media coverage”.

Dave Morris, the former director of Ramblers Scotland, described McKee’s resignation as “inevitable” after the “cover-up” of his mistakes was exposed. “It is unlikely to be the last resignation as the board's reputation continues to spiral downwards,” he claimed.

“Our national parks were supposed to demonstrate best practice, but instead in Loch Lomond we have never-ending lessons in leadership failure. It is an embarrassment to Scotland.”

Scottish Government snubbed by Westminster on UN poverty summit

from Sunday Herald, 13 September 2015

Westminster has barred the Scottish Government from joining a UK delegation to a vital international summit this month aimed at combating poverty, injustice, inequality and climate change.

The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, last week rejected a request from the Scottish minister, Humza Yousaf, to join the official delegation to a United Nations (UN) meeting of world leaders to adopt 17 sustainable development goals.

Greening said that the delegation was full of UK ministers and officials so there wasn’t space for Yousaf. He responded by saying it was a “disgrace” that Scotland was being snubbed.

The summit in New York on 25-27 September is expected to be attended by over 150 world leaders. According to the UN, they will commit to achieving three “extraordinary things” in the next 15 years.

“End extreme poverty. Fight inequality and injustice. Fix climate change,” the UN said. “The global goals for sustainable development could get these things done, in all countries, for all people.”

Coal industry’s bid for tax breaks under fire

from The National, 08 September 2015

An industry bid to win carbon tax breaks for opencast coal mines in Scotland has run into fierce opposition from environmentalists in the run-up to a debate by MPs at Westminster.

The Durham-based coal company, Hargreaves Services, is lobbying for exemptions to carbon taxes so that it can mine new coal and use some of the profits to restore derelict opencast sites. But critics say the tax breaks could just end up subsidising mines that damage the environment and fail to restore some of the worst sites.

Instead they are proposing using carbon taxes to build up a £100 million restoration fund. This could ensure that restoration is properly targeted, sustainable and of real benefit to communities and the environment, they argue.

After two coal companies went bust in 2013, Scotland was left with a massive £200 million hole in the funds needed to clean up the mess made by 32 opencast coal mines in East Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife and Midlothian.

Ministers and industry have since been struggling with how to ensure that the promises made to local communities to repair their scarred landscapes are kept. Hargreaves, which now operates seven opencast mines and looks after another seven defunct mines in Scotland, warned in December that falling coal prices would lead to a big drop in profits this year.

Fishermen accused of ignoring ban on scallop dredging

from Sunday Herald, 06 September 2015

A fishing business is facing prosecution for allegedly breaching a ban on scallop dredging designed to protect a wealth of seabed wildlife off the west coast of Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s marine watchdog has seized dredging gear and submitted a report to the Procurator Fiscal accusing fishermen of illegally scraping the seafloor for the lucrative shellfish in the Firth of Lorn, a large nature conservation area south of the island of Mull.

The move comes in the wake of new evidence that an eight-year ban on scallop-dredging in the firth has been ignored by fishermen. At the same time, fierce arguments between the industry and conservationists over a planned new system of marine protected areas are coming to a head.

Over 200 square kilometres of the Firth of Lorn, which contains the famed Corryvreckan whirlpool, are designated as a Special Area of Conversation (SAC). This gives legal protection to rocky reefs and the endangered and unusual marine wildlife they support, such as sponges, seafans, featherstars and coral.

Scientists say that scallop dredging, which pulls toothed rakes across the seafloor, can inflict serious damage to wildlife. In 2007 the Scottish Government banned all scallop dredging in the Firth of Lorn SAC.

Forth coal gas plan postponed because of opposition

25 August 2015

The multi-millionaire oil tycoon, Algy Cluff, is delaying a planning application to gasify coal under the Firth of Forth in the face of mounting political opposition.

In a statement to shareholders, he discloses that “work on a planning application will likely be postponed until after such time as the political situation is more certain.” The application to pilot underground coal gasification (UCG) by test drilling off Kincardine in Fife was originally due to be made this autumn, but then was shifted to next year.

But now Cluff does not put a date on when the application might be, blaming “external factors”. These include, he says, “the on-going commission recently set up by the Scottish Government to review Scotland’s energy needs which is due to report in September 2015, a motion at the SNP Party Conference calling for the inclusion of UCG in its moratorium on onshore oil and gas and the Scottish Parliamentary Elections in May 2016.”

These moves all “have the ability to impact the development of the Kincardine project,” he says. “Accordingly we have deemed it prudent to await clarity on these matters before committing fully to, in particular, the expense of an environmental impact study.”

Cluff insists, however, that he is still committed to developing UCG in the Forth, and that work is continuing with regulators and the US oil giant, Halliburton, on technical aspects. “It remains our avowed intention to seek approval to install a pilot plant as soon as is practicable to generate limited production from the Firth of Forth before constructing Britain’s first UCG plant,” he says.

Diageo under fire for failing to meet targets to cut pollution

from Sunday Herald, 23 August 2015

Diageo, the £11 billion drinks giant and world-leading whisky producer, has admitted breaching seven out of eight of its environmental targets to cut pollution and waste.

The British multinational, responsible for at least 24 Scottish whisky brands including Johnny Walker, Bells, J&B, Talisker and Langavulin, failed to cut waste water contamination, climate emissions and landfill waste as it promised. The company, which made over £3 billion profit in 2014, also owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Baileys, and Captain Morgan.

One of Diageo’s most polluting plants - with some of the highest emissions of any industrial site in Scotland - is the Cameronbridge grain distillery at Leven in Fife. The plant’s carbon dioxide pollution has risen in recent years to a record high.

Environmentalists have attacked the company’s “shoddy” performance, alleging that it is damaging the clean image on which its whisky depends. Diageo argued, however, that its targets were “very stretching” and it had significantly reduced its environmental impact.

In 2008 Diageo set itself eight targets to achieve in 2015, aimed at significantly improving the environmental sustainability of its business. But its latest annual report reveals that it has only managed to meet one of them – improving water efficiency by 30 per cent.

Warning that tax break will boost contaminated soil dumping

from The National, 17 August 2015

The Scottish government’s green watchdog has been accused of supporting a tax break that will lead to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil being dumped at landfill sites.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has backed new guidance proposed by the tax agency, Revenue Scotland, which could make it much cheaper to dispose of soil that has been polluted by industry in the past.

Under the guidance, companies wanting to get rid of contaminated soil could pay £80 a tonne less tax to tip it into landfill sites. Industry experts fear that this will mean that less soil is cleaned up for use in building projects, putting specialised soil decontamination firms out of business.

Revenue Scotland is proposing new guidance on the landfill taxes imposed on firms disposing of soil. The option that is backed by Sepa would mean that firms return to the old “dig and dump” regime of the past, according to the Edinburgh soil cleaning company, Soilutions.

In a submission to Revenue Scotland’s consultation, published last week, the company’s managing director, John Curran, warned that the guidance would open up a tax loophole. “Waste tourism from south of the border is inevitable,” he said.

Coal gas contamination in Australia sparks fears of Scottish disaster

from The National, 17 August 2015

Revelations that an underground coal gas plant in Australia is facing prosecution for allegedly contaminating over 300 square kilometres of farmland have sparked fears that the same could happen in Scotland.

The Queensland government has launched a £3 million criminal court action accusing a mining company of leaking toxic chemicals and potentially explosive gases into the soil, water and air from a facility at Chinchilla, west of Brisbane. The charge sheet, seen by the Sunday Herald, says the contamination is “extensive and widespread” and that the harm caused is “irreversible”.

The technique of burning coal underground to extract gas for commercial use in Australia, known as underground coal gasification (UCG), is now planned for the Firth of Forth and the Solway Firth. Community and environmental campaigners fear it could be disastrous, and are stepping up their demands for UCG to be included in the Scottish Government’s fracking moratorium.

The companies proposing UCG in Scotland, however, say that their technologies will be different, deeper underground and safer. The Australian firm facing the contamination charges strongly denies them.

The Queensland government has imposed a 314 square kilometre “caution zone” around experimental UCG plants operated by Linc Energy in Chinchilla between 1999 and 2013. Digging below two metres is banned because of risks from explosions and pollution.

Pop-up protest planned against BP sponsorship of the Edinburgh Festival

from The National, 13 August 2015

The Edinburgh International Festival is to be targeted this weekend by a theatrical protest against sponsorship by the oil giant BP, blamed for climate pollution.

Environmentalists, fringe performers and arts sponsorship campaigners accuse the festival of “greenwashing” a company contributing to “catastrophic climate change” by accepting it as one of the festival’s headline partners.

They say they are planning a “pop-up performance protest” at an as yet undisclosed location in Edinburgh at noon on Sunday. They promise to “perform a piece of guerilla theatre, highlighting the festival's unethical choice of major sponsor.”

The organisers, an activist theatre group called ‘BP or not BP?’, have previously disrupted events sponsored by BP at the British Museum and the Tate gallery in London. In May they invaded the British Museum with a singing show in which wildlife were trapped in an oil slick of black umbrellas.

They have also brought Sherlock Holmes to the museum in search of “the world’s biggest corporate criminal”, and put BP on trial with a public flashmob. Last year they staged a surprise performance of an anti-oil version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a Tate Britain art exhibition funded and branded by BP.

Call from experts to back low-pollution homes

from The National, 11 August 2015

Experts from industry and universities are urging the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to reject UK government moves to abandon plans for zero carbon homes aimed at cutting waste and pollution.

Last month, the UK Chancellor George Osborne slipped out a surprise announcement that he was dropping a previous commitment that all new homes built from 2016 would meet zero carbon targets. His aim was to “reduce regulation” for builders, but it is likely to result in new houses with less insulation and more wasted energy.

Osborne’s move prompted a howl of protest from UK businesses. In a joint letter, they argued that the sudden policy U-turn would inhibit investment, be “regressive” and “harmful to British industry”.

Now 20 academics, business leaders and professionals have signed an open letter to Sturgeon urging her to take a very different approach. “Work with us to develop new policies to ensure the wide-ranging impacts of the disastrous decisions now being made at Westminster will not be felt by the people of Scotland,” the letter says. 

“Improving the condition and energy efficiency of the Scottish housing stock will be essential in meeting many of our environmental, social and economic objectives towards 2030 and 2050. Removing the current targets, or letting them slip further, will add to our legacy of sub-standard housing that is not fit for a world in which all homes will need to be zero carbon homes.”

Ministers move to ban GM crops to keep Scotland ‘clean and green’

from Sunday Herald, 9 August 2015

Scotland is planning to toughen its ban on growing genetically modified (GM) crops by formally opting out of the European Union’s pro-GM farming regime.

The Scottish Government will be applying to Brussels to be excluded from approvals for GM crops across Europe. Allowing GM would threaten the nation’s “clean and green brand” and be “gambling” with its £14 billion food industry, according to Environment Minister, Richard Lochhead.

His stance has been enthusiastically welcomed by food campaigners, though some urge him to go further. Farmers and the GM industry, however, have reacted with disappointment, criticising the minister for foreclosing future options.

New European Union rules earlier this year permit member states and devolved administrations to restrict or prohibit newly approved GM crops within their territories. Countries can also apply to be exempted from a GM maize that has already been approved and six other crops awaiting approval.

Lochhead announced today that the Scottish Government intends to submit a request that Scotland is excluded from all European consents for the cultivation of GM crops. Banning GM would help protect and enhance the reputation of Scotland’s beautiful natural environment, he said.

‘Hello, can you help me? Am I allowed to burn down my house?’

from Sunday Herald, 9 August 2015

My fridge is a biohazard, my bathwater has turned lurid green and I don’t know how to dispose of my false teeth. And am I allowed to burn down my house?

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has revealed some of the more bizarre requests for help received recently by staff at its 24-hour emergency call centre at Holytown in North Lanarkshire.

The centre, which usually deals with floods, waste dumping, pollution and a host of other serious problems, occasionally has to cope with calls from people anxious about less earth-shattering matters. Staff have learnt to “expect the unexpected,” Sepa says.

Amongst the 73,000 phone calls the centre has taken in the last year, some have left trained operators bewildered. One worried caller asked if Sepa inspectors could come to his house to check for “airborne hazards” from a fridge, because everything inside had turned black while it had been switched off for three months.

A mother rang the emergency number, frantic because her bathwater had turned a lurid shade of green. It turned out that the woman’s teenage daughter had spiked a shampoo bottle with hair dye.

An elderly gentleman called up asking how he could safely dispose of an old pair of false teeth. A singing group asked if their annual party would have any environmental health implications, while one woman reported slugs in her kitchen.

National park under fire for ‘cover-up’ of shares in £200m gold mine

from Sunday Herald, 02 August 2015

The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park authority has been accused of a “cover-up” over the resignation of one of its leading members for failing to declare shares in a £200 million gold mining company for more than two years.

Internal documents seen by the Sunday Herald reveal that Owen McKee resigned as vice-convener and chair of the planning committee in December. This followed his admission that he had bought more than half a million shares for close to £12,000 in Scotgold, an Australian company that is planning to dig for gold under a hill at Cononish near Tyndrum in the national park.

After “serious concern” from fellow board members about the “reputational risks” to the park, he decided to sell his shares hours before a meeting due to discuss arrangements for considering the gold mine. He remains a member of the park board and planning committee.

Board members were repeatedly warned to keep what had happened secret, and were not given the full report of an internal investigation into McKee’s shareholdings. “This matter is highly sensitive and confidential and is not in the public domain”, they were told by park convener, Linda McKay, in December.

Outdoor campaigners allege that the park authority deliberately tried to hide the reasons for McKee’s resignation from the public, and have lodged a complaint with the ethical standards watchdog. The authority is “not fit for purpose”, its leaders should be suspended and a government investigation launched, they say.

How an oil tycoon lobbied Scottish ministers on coal gas

from The Ferret, 28 July 2015

Scottish ministers were privately warned by a multi-millionaire oil tycoon that Scotland would lose £250 million worth of investment if they blocked plans to extract coal gas from under the Firth of Forth, reports The Ferret.

In a letter to the planning minister, Alex Neil, and the energy minister, Fergus Ewing veteran entrepreneur Algy Cluff said that including his plans for underground coal gasification (UCG) in the fracking moratorium would have a “potentially devastating” impact on his company’s “ability to operate and invest further in Scotland”.

A week later later Neil replied, reassuring Cluff that “the moratorium does not apply to the offshore underground gasification of coal”. But Cluff’s comments have now prompted a prominent SNP politician to call for the moratorium to be extended to include UCG.

Tommy Sheppard, the MP for Edinburgh East, said that UCG was “more problematic than fracking because it has a greater risk of underground explosions.” Cluff’s letter was “likely to be counter-productive”, he told The Ferret.

Sheppard added: “The Scottish Government’s moratorium applies to planning applications for unconventional gas extraction. By any measure UCG is unconventional. I would therefore have thought that if Cluff makes an application for land-based facilities to drill for coal gas under the Firth of Forth, he should be refused.”

The Ferret, a new not-for-profit platform for investigative journalism, has recently published stories about the CCTV network in crisis, the Srebrenica massacre and suicide bombers in Pakistan. Read more here. Contribute to The Ferret's crowdfunding campaign, which ends on 10 August 2015, here.

Drinking water contamination incidents double in a year

from Sunday Herald, 26 July 2015

Scottish Water has come under attack from a government safety watchdog because the number of contamination problems and incidents doubled across the drinking water network in a year.

There had been a “deterioration throughout the water supply system” on bacterial quality, according to the regulator, Sue Petch. She has also launched legal enforcement action because of an “unacceptable” level of faecal parasites and a “very disappointing” number of incidents at one water treatment works in Aberdeenshire.

Petch, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator, has released her report for 2014. It reveals there were 53 incidents across Scotland rated as significant, serious and major, some of them contaminating drinking water delivered to hundreds of consumers.

Her report does not include the major incident last month when more than 6,000 residents in North Lanarkshire were left without tap water for two days because of contamination by an “oily-based substance”. The cause of the incident is still being investigated.

Petch points out that water quality standards for coliform bacteria, used as an indicator of contamination, were breached 40 times in 2014, compared to 17 times in 2013. “I am disappointed to have to report this position and have requested that Scottish Water examine disinfection processes, in detail, at all of its treatment works,” she says.

Rare bee discovered in path of Cairngorm housing scheme

from Sunday Herald, 26 July 2015

Wildlife experts have discovered a rare and unique bee in an ancient Cairngorm woodland destined to be turned into a housing estate.

A pinewood mason bee has been recorded and photographed on the site of a planned development at Rothiemurchus near Aviemore in the Cairngorm National Park. Known as An Camas Mòr and envisaging a 1,500-house new town, the scheme has long been opposed by conservationists.

The ginger and black bee (Osmia uncinata) can only be found in a few parts of the highlands, as it favours sunshine, Scots pine trees and one particular flower, bird’s foot trefoil. It is a solitary bee without a hive, and burrows in holes left in old trees by longhorn beetles.

It was found earlier this month by Dr Gus Jones, convener of the Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group. “This find again shows that the An Camas Mòr area in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park has precious wildlife,” he says.

“To pretend options exist for construction of a new town here that are sustainable and leave natural heritage interests unscathed is to ignore ecological understanding of this special area.”

Ineos accused of planning to breach fracking moratorium

from Sunday Herald, 19 July 2015

The petrochemical giant, Ineos, is being accused of planning to flout the Scottish Government’s fracking moratorium by test drilling for shale gas in central Scotland.

The company has revealed that it is going to apply for planning permission to sink four or five wells to find out how much gas is trapped in underground rocks. This will not involve hydraulic fracturing, it says, and will be consistent with the government’s desire for further research.

But community and environmental groups angrily insist that test drilling would breach the moratorium and destroy public trust. They are demanding that ministers block Ineos’s applications.

A temporary moratorium on “the granting of planning consents for all unconventional oil and gas developments, including fracking” was announced by the Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing in January. He ordered local authorities and regulators not to permit developments while health risks were investigated and a public consultation was held.

The timescale for the investigation and consultation have yet to be announced, and they are now expected to extend beyond the Scottish election in May 2016. But Ineos has indicated that it wants to start test drilling and seismic testing for shale gas soon.

Anti-litter group under fire for backing packaging industry on drinks containers

from Sunday Herald, 19 July 2015

The anti-litter charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), has been accused of being a “creature” of the corporate packaging industry after it came out against a Scottish government plan to cut litter by charging deposits on drinks containers.

Most environmental groups support the introduction of a deposit scheme because they think it would cut waste by encouraging bottles, cans and cartons to be returned and recycled. But KSB says it is a bad idea - echoing the views of big drinks firms, supermarkets and the packaging industry, with which it has developed close ties.

The Scottish Environment Minister, Richard Lochhead, launched an investigation into the feasibility of a deposit scheme for Scotland after he saw how effective it was in reducing litter in Sweden. In May, he called for evidence from industry and others, after publishing a report highlighting the benefits of 10p or 20p deposits on drinks containers.

Deposits would encourage people to return containers and get their money back, the minister argued. Like charging for plastic carrier bags, a deposit scheme “has the potential to be very beneficial for the environment”, he said.

Leading environmental groups agree that a deposit scheme would reduce litter and boost recycling. But the scheme has been rejected by drink, retail and packaging companies because of the difficulties they will have collecting and returning containers.

Row over Duke of Buccleuch’s £20 charge for walking your dog in his park

from Sunday Herald, 12 July 2015

The Duke of Buccleuch has been accused of breaking Scotland’s ‘right to roam’ law by trying to make people pay to take walks on his 1,000-acre estate near Edinburgh.

The UK’s largest private landowner is charging dog walkers £20 for an “annual pass” and demanding £1 from ramblers and cyclists when they visit Dalkeith Country Park. He is also installing CCTV, electric controls on the main gate, and local people claim he is attempting to restrict access at other entrances. 

The duke’s moves have infuriated residents, ramblers and politicians who argue that local people have been walking in the park for free for decades. Some claimed the charges are “extortionate” and “totally unreasonable”, with some walkers refuse to pay them.

But the Buccleuch estate said it is “mystified” by “misleading” suggestions that it is trying to restrict access. New security measures were being introduced to prevent anti-social behaviour and the killing of deer but these should not deter walkers, it said.

Dalkeith Country Park is one of Buccleuch’s five major country estates, four of them in Scotland and one in England, covering a total of over 240,000 acres. It is the site of Dalkeith Palace, built in 1702 and used by Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.

Ministers ordered to name the salmon farms that shoot seals

from The National, 8 July 2015

The Scottish Government has lost a long-running battle to keep the names of fish farms that shoot seals secret.

In two rulings yesterday, the Scottish Information Commissioner, Rosemary Agnew, ordered ministers to identify the individual farms responsible for killing 185 seals in 2013 and 2014. She dismissed the government’s argument that this could put staff and their families at risk from protestors.

Her decision was welcomed as a “landmark victory” by environmental campaigners, who are urging the public to boycott salmon from seal-shooting farms. The salmon farming industry stressed, however, that shooting was “always a last resort”.

Salmon farmers, river fisheries and salmon netters are licenced to shoot seals to prevent them eating fish. Over the four years to 2014, they shot a total of 1,371 grey and harbour seals, according to figures from the Scottish Government.

For the last two years the Montrose-based salmon netting company, Usan Salmon Fisheries, has been targeted by animal right activists trying to prevent seals from being killed. Our sister paper, the Sunday Herald, revealed last month that police had sent three reports to the procurator fiscal accusing both sides of breaking the law.