Business / Faulty drainage system behind the Tesco milk spill
A FAULT, or ‘misconnection’, in Tesco’s drainage system appears to have led to milk dumped “down drains” ending up in the sea in Lerwick.
Photos of the sea opposite the Lerwick supermarket at South Road turning white were widely shared on social media over the weekend.
The retailer had to remove all its frozen and chilled products on Saturday morning after a power cut the previous evening resulted in a fault at the company’s freezing and chilling equipment.
Clarifying the issue on Monday afternoon, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) said the town’s drainage system should have easily been able to deal with the quantities of milk disposed of.
“Disposal down the drain is an acceptable option, as it goes to the Scottish Water system which is designed to deal with larger quantities than in this case”, a spokesperson for the agency said.
“However, after becoming aware of the issue the store manager advised that disposal via this route had been stopped, and the milk is now being stored for disposal via another route.”
They added: “Having checked with Scottish Water, who confirmed that there were no issues at the pumping station, it appears there may be a misconnection within the store’s drainage system.
“Given the quantity of milk and the dispersal and dilution in the sea, SEPA are satisfied there has been no risk to the environment as a result of this incident.
“SEPA will continue to investigate the potential misconnection to ensure there are no ongoing issues.”
Tesco said it had reported itself to SEPA and fully supports the agency in investigating the incident.
The company also said that it was “misleading” to suggest that the store does not have a back-up generator.
“Following the power cut, an engineer was required to resolve an issue with the refrigeration units in store,” the company said.
They advised that the Lerwick store has again a “good availability of chilled and frozen food, following its withdrawal on Saturday”.
The SEPA spokesperson added: “We would like to take this opportunity to thank the member of the public who brought this matter to our attention, which enabled a swift investigation.
“We would urge anyone who is concerned about a potential pollution incident to contact our pollution hotline via sepa.org.uk/report or 0800 80 70 60.”
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