of providing new sources of clean water was often beyond the abilities of local authorities to cope, the Central Scotland Water Development Board was also created by the Act and given the responsibility of providing new sources. They would then supply the water to local authorities in bulk. With the passing of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, larger regions were created, and responsibility for water supply passed to the nine regional councils of Highland, Grampian, Tayside, Fife, Lothian, Borders, Central, Strathclyde, and Dumfries and Galloway. A tenth Island Area included Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles, although they continued to act independently. They were also given responsibility for sewage treatment, which prior to the Act had been handled by 234 separate organisations. The Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 changed this system, and from April 1996 all water supply and sewerage services were provided by three publicly owned Regional Water Authorities, the North of Scotland Water Authority, the West of Scotland Water Authority, and the East of Scotland Water Authority. The West of Scotland Water Authority was the largest of the three, serving some 2.25 million people occupying an area of over , previously managed by Strathclyde and Dumfries and Galloway Regional Councils. This includes major cities, industrial areas and large rural tracts. Water is obtained largely from surface sources, including 13 lochs, 134 impounding reservoirs and 95 abstraction points, on streams, springs and boreholes. The East of Scotland Water Authority supplied 1.58 million people from 107 surface water sources, which include lochs, reservoirs and rivers, and 32 groundwater sources. Its area of responsibility covered Edinburgh, the Borders, the Lothians, Fife and Kinross, the Forth Valley, and parts of North Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire. The North of Scotland Water Authority covered the rest of Scotland, including the Highlands, Grampian and Tayside regions on the mainland, and Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. The Scottish Water and Sewerage Customers' Council had an overall responsibility for monitoring water services. The post of Water Industry Commissioner was created under Part II of the Water Industry Act 1999. As the economic regulator for the water industry, and with the need to spend huge sums on investment, to meet the ever-increasing demands of water quality and sewage treatment, a study was carried out into ways to achieve economies, and identified that saving of between £100 million and £168 million could be made if the three