12.11.2008

In The Courts - Water Pollution

Anglian Water Services Ltd (Anglian Water) was fined £150,000 with £28,973 costs for four times allowing illegal discharges from its sewage treatment works in Newmarket to the No 1 Public Drain, and on one occasion causing the death of 1,200 fish.

The offences occurred because of operational and management failures and failure to respond to alarms. Investigations by the Environment Agency continued over a period of more than 12 months and Anglian Water's attitude contributed to the length of time it took for the case to come to court.

The first offence happened in January 2006 when the level of discharged ammonia was more than twice the allowed level. The following offences happened while the first was being investigated.

The then manager of the site, either by himself, or through other employees of the company, subsequently removed, destroyed and falsified information in the site log book which recorded levels of ammonia in the discharge. The log book used for recording data had no numbers or references on its pages which would have alerted anyone to the removal of pages. Pages were perforated and could be torn out easily without detection and there was no computer back-up or duplication of information which could regularly be audited.

An Anglian Water member of staff acted as a whistleblower and informed senior management of the situation. The company has since sacked the manager.