River goes from stink to water fit to drink

IT was once a stinking cesspit of a river beside which only the poorest people in the city were prepared to live.

Chemical leaks from factories and dumped rubbish made life beside the Water of Leith a particularly pungent and unpleasant experience in Victorian times.

And its bad image has proved frustratingly hard to shift, with many people to this day still thinking of it as a dirty river.

Now visitors are to be invited to drink water from the river in an effort to show how it has been transformed.

Celebrated chef Martin Wishart will on Thursday unveil a temporary waterside art installation, featuring ten tall, glass tubes, from which people will be able to drink. The installation, outside Leith's Malmaison hotel, will filter the water, to eliminate any of the pollutants which can potentially occur in even the cleanest river.

A similar project was staged on the banks of the Thames last month when Londoners queued up for a taste of their notoriously polluted waterway.

Helen Brown, of the Water of Leith Conservation Trust, said: "The perception is that the Water of Leith is a dirty old river, but the water is actually of good quality.

"The whole concept of filtering the water and being able to make it pure and clean enough to drink is quite encouraging. We hope it will change people's view of the river.

"It gives us the opportunity to say actually the Water of Leith is not a polluted environment, and with a small filtration process, we can drink it."

The art installation was commissioned by drinks firm Diageo and uses the same filtration process used to make its Smirnoff vodka. It will stand beside the Water of Leith for three days before embarking on a world tour with its sponsors.

The Water of Leith was said to be the most polluted river in Scotland in the 19th century when raw sewage was pumped straight into the water along with industrial waste from milling, dye works and tanning.

Following a comment by Robert Louis Stevenson, who once described the river as "that dirty Water of Leith", the first sewers were introduced to the river from Roseburn to Leith in 1864.

The construction of a full network of sewers began in 1886, continuing right up until the 1960s. This, combined with the decline of riverside industry, is largely responsible for the gradual clean up of the river.

Martin Wishart, who owns Restaurant Martin Wishart on The Shore, in Leith, said:

"I think it is a great idea, to see how pure you can make the water and I believe it's going to be a huge success. The public will be able to see the process happening in front of them, so shouldn't have any worries about drinking the river water."

Diageo spokeswoman Clare Fleerackers said: "It is ironic that the Water of Leith has got this reputation of being dirty and polluted, but despite that, there seems to be a lot of wildlife in the river. People do not think they will be able to drink water directly from the river - it just goes against everything anyone thinks about river water."