 The aqueduct which carries water from Loch Katrine to Glasgow | |
| Industry | Water |
|---|---|
| Fate | Taken over |
| Headquarters | Glasgow, Scotland |
Glasgow Corporation Water Works and its successors have provided a public water supply and sewerage and sewage treatment services to the Scottish city of Glasgow. There were several schemes in the early part of the 1800s, with the Glasgow Company which was established in 1806 pumping filtered water from the River Clyde into the city. The Gorbals Gravitation Water Company was established in 1846, and brought water from reservoirs to the south-west of the city. However, an outbreak of cholera in 1848/1849, in which 4,000 people died, concentrated the minds of Glasgow Council, and in 1855 a scheme to use water from Loch Katrine, 36 miles (58 km) to the north, was authorised. The work required at Loch Katrine was quite modest, and the major construction work was the building of an aqueduct to carry the water to the city by gravity.
The civil engineer John Frederick Bateman managed the contract, but the engineer for final section into the city was James Morris Gale, who became the Engineer in Chief for the Glasgow Water Commissioners when the project was completed in 1859. He oversaw the development of the system, with levels in Loch Katrine being raised and a second aqueduct being constructed, until he retired in 1902. Extra water was obtained from Loch Arklet in 1914, when a dam and tunnel into Loch Katrine were completed, but a similar scheme to impound water in Glen Finglas and feed it through a tunnel to Loch Katrine was delayed by the First World War, and was not implemented until 1965. A new treatment works at Milngavie costing £120 million was completed in 2008 and opened by Queen Elizabeth.
Glasgow also invested in sewerage, with sewage treatment works opening at Dalmarnock in 1894, Dalmuir in 1904 and Shieldhall in 1910. They carried out research into better ways to treat sewage, and until 1935 sold sludge cakes as "Globe Fertiliser". Surplus sludge was carried away by a fleet of sludge ships, to be dumped at sea, and the ships also took passengers along for the voyage, initially to help recuperating soldiers, but later for the general public. A major upgrade to the sewerage infrastructure took place in 2017, when a 3.1-mile (5.0 km) tunnel was completed, to provide storm water storage, a project which reduces flood risk, and should ensure that the River Clyde is not polluted by sewage overflows in storm conditions.