07.11.2008

£18,000 Fine for Over Abstraction of Water

Laundry firm The Sunlight Service Group Ltd has been fined a total of £18,000 and ordered to pay £2,494 costs for the over abstraction of water at least four times last year. The company was also charged with failing to record meter readings as specified in its abstraction licence.

King's Lynn Magistrates' Court heard that the laundry firm had a licence to take groundwater from boreholes with limits imposed hourly and daily to restrict the effect on the River Wensum, a designated SSSI (Special Site of Scientific Interest) and European Special Area of Conservation.

The excessive abstraction came to light on a routine Environment Agency inspection when it was noted from records that the company had exceeded the daily abstraction rate several times.

The prosecutor said that the over abstractions appeared to have been 'a consequence of poor management'. Meter readings were not being compared with licence limits and the offences were both foreseeable and preventable.

It was later confirmed by an engineer that the company's water meter was 25% inaccurate but discounting those times, there were still many occasions when they were 10% over the daily limit. Four of those occasions were the subject of the charges to which the company pleaded guilty.

Investigating officers were told that the employee responsible for reading the meter was on long term sick leave which resulted in the metering job being missed. The company admitted that the management on site was 'ad hoc' but they were putting in measures to prevent over abstractions recurring.