Been there, bought the t shirt

We have already been through this palaver with the water, you know.

It was nothing to do with snow and it happened when our son was a few days old.

We took our tiny, precious bundle home from hospital and as it was summer, I had hoped to take him out for walks and let him breathe in fresh air.
This was not to be.

A neighbouring farmer discovered that there was a cheap method of having 'fertilizer' spread over his fields and several hundred, I kid you not, several hundred tons of the 'fertilizer' were dumped in a huge heap very close to our house but on the other farmer's land.
The ash from the heap blew everywhere and the smell was sickening. It lay in huge lumps on the public road and made driving difficult. Nobody seemed to know what this stuff was.

I found out that it was human excrement. It came from sewage works and had lime added to 'compost' it down.

My tiny newly born infant was ingesting this vile stuff.

To make matters a thousand times worse, when the contractors sprayed it on the ground, our private water supply took a direct hit. The photo attached shows the same scene as the snowy picture and the little fenced area in the middle of the picture is the water tank which collects water straight off the hill.
The summer picture shows the spreader has gone too close.

We had readings taken of the water and it was not safe to drink so we had to boil, cool and store water to bathe the baby, wash all his clothes with water brought in, buy copious amounts of clean water to brush our teeth in, cook with etc.
Our daughter has difficulty with her memory so we had to watch her constantly in case she forgot and drank the contaminated water.
We could not hang our clothes out on the line outside as everything stank of faeces. We could smell it at night and had to keep the windows closed.
One fisherman who had been in the Army and had worked in places abroad remarked the smell reminded him of decomposing bodies.

We had to repeat the whole excercise the following year...ad nauseum.

Not one single agency was interested in helping us do anything to stop the 'sludge' being spread near us. No one was interested when some children and their parents swam in the burn beside the house - we had to tell them to go to their GP and get checked out.
Nobody, SEPA, SEERAD, Environmental Health, animal Health, MSP, police nor press, nobody wanted to become involved. And nobody told the public that the thick white stuff which stuck to their tyres, pram wheels and dogs paws at a famous local beauty spot, was human excrement.

The only reason that the practice has been delayed for next year is that the company has gone bust. I wonder who will buy their foul wares ?

Is it too much to ask that our water supply, which is fragile enough as it is, can be left unpolluted? Can I also ask that the farmer remove his animals either from the  land for the allotted timespan or even move them out of the field altogether whilst they spray the 'sludge'. I also object strongly to seeing newly born calves eat the 'sludge' from unfenced heaps. You can clearly see a cow in the picture below.

So boiling and lugging water is nothing new to us but I rather hoped that it was more convenient in winter.
It is odd how those responsible for setting down environmental laws do not seem interested when the guidelines are broken. You would almost imagine that they are paid to sit on their hands.....