£500k Fine For Wessex Water After Pollution Incident

Utility company Wessex Water has been fined £500,000 by Swindon Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to sewage leak incidents that killed thousands of fish in the Clackers Brook, a tributary of the River Avon, the result of stormwater discharges at the Bowerhill Lodge sewage pumping station at Melksham, Wiltshire.

A separate incident related to a burst sewer main at the Wick St Lawrence sewage plant near Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, with the company also found to have failed to report the cases to the Environment Agency as early as it should have done.

At Clackers Brook, over 2,100 fish died as a result of the sewage discharge, including lamprey, eels and bullheads, all of which are at risk and listed as such by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Nearly all the fish within a 1km stretch were killed, with the discharge (which lasted for 54.5 hours) down to a mechanical failure, which was not immediately reported to the Environment Agency.

An investigation into the matter found that the treatment work’s alarm and telemetry system had failed, while a power cable had become entangled in pump equipment, contributing to the failures.

Meanwhile, at Wick St Lawrence, it was found that a rising main had burst, killing fish including eels and stickleback. This rising main had already been identified by the water company as a critical issue that required monitoring, but this did not happen until after the incident had already taken place.

Wessex Water had previously submitted a document to Ofwat in 2018 showing that the number of pipe bursts had significantly increased in recent years, with around 70-80 taking place annually due to ageing pipework. It was predicted that pipes would need to be replaced at nine times the current rate in order to remain stable.

Over a period of eight years (2015-2023), 28 serious pollution incidents were caused by the water supplier, six of which were the result of rising mains, making up 21 per cent of serious incidents across the eight-year period.

Commenting on the case, Janine Maclean – senior environment officer with the Environment Agency – said: “Wessex Water’s rising mains are ageing and becoming vulnerable to bursting and are an area of increasing concern to the Environment Agency, presenting risk to people and the environment.

“We recognise the company is increasing its monitoring of rising mains, which is a positive step forward, but monitoring is still reliant on failure, and we would like to see the company significantly increase the level of investment it makes to proactively replace rising mains before they fail.

“We expect all water companies to manage and maintain their sewage pumping stations and rising mains in a responsible and sustainable manner to ensure they do not cause pollution.

“We hope these cases send a clear signal to shareholders and water company board rooms, up and down the country, that investing in resilient sewage systems to prevent pollution and ensure compliance, must be an essential way of doing business.”

Pollution crackdown

In September, the government introduced the water (special measures) bill to reduce pollution of rivers, lakes and seas, giving regulators new powers to take tougher action against water companies found to be damaging the environment and failing their customers.

The Environment Agency will be empowered to move ahead with criminal charges against water executives breaking the law, with tougher penalties in place including imprisonment. Furthermore, bonus payments will be banned if water bosses fail to meet high environmental protection standards, as well as those relating to company finances and consumers.

An increase in inspections is also now being seen to help improve water quality, with almost 500 Environment Agency inspections carried out across the south-west since April. The overarching aim is to quadruple inspections to 4,000 by the end of March next year.

And the largest-ever criminal investigation into possible widespread non-compliance by water suppliers at thousands of sewage treatment works is now ongoing. Since 2015, 63 prosecutions have been concluded by the Agency, with fines of over £151 million secured.

Clarissa Newell, water industry regulation manager with the Agency, said: “Water company performance is not good enough. We will change that. We now have more people who are very good at finding faults, flagging them, and checking progress.

“This focused approach of turning inspection data into actionable intelligence will drive improvements in the water industry which we and the public expect to see.”

How businesses can help

Prioritising water sustainability is a must for businesses eager to protect the nation’s waterways and safeguard resources for future generations.

To find out how best to go about reducing water usage and consumption, as well as driving down potential avenues for pollution, get in touch with the SwitchWaterSupplier.com team today.