After raw sewage flowed into a river, killing almost 2,400 fish, Anglian Water and a contractor were fined a total of £60,000.
In Stanground, Peterborough, on December 27, 2018, a sewer owned by Anglian Water collapsed.
Contractors Danaher and Walsh were hired by the water utility to come in and temporarily address the situation.
Danaher and Walsh devised a technique for over-pumping sewage back into the drainage system. It became clogged, however, with rags and stuff that should not be flushed, such as baby wipes. It failed a few days later, resulting in sewage entering Stanground Lode.
The incident was not reported to the Environment Agency by either company; instead, a concerned member of the public called the agency’s incident hotline.
Untreated sewage is thought to have been pouring into the river for up to ten hours. Ammonia levels were determined to be 200 times higher than typical water quality limits 200 feet downstream from the discharge.
Danaher and Walsh countered that it would have been impossible to foresee how much rag would be flushed in this amount of time. It claimed that in its 30 years of operation, it had never seen an obstruction like the one at Stanground.
On June 1, 2022, both firms stood in Peterborough magistrates’ court and pled guilty. They were charged for polluting Stanground Lode with an illegal sewage dump between January 5 and January 8, 2019. This is in violation of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Provisions 2016 regulations 12(1)(b) and 38(1)(a).
Both offenders had a modest level of guilt, according to the judge. Anglian Water was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay costs of £24,387.58. Danaher and Walsh were fined £10,000 plus costs of £5,000 each.
Yvonne Daly, an environment manager at the Environment Agency in Cambridgeshire, said:
“The Environment Agency takes such devastating pollution incidents incredibly seriously.”
“Anyone caught breaching environmental laws faces enforcement action, up to and including prosecution.”
“We are disappointed with the fine issued in this case and would like to see higher penalties to really deter polluters from future offenses.”
“Both companies in this case failed in their environmental duties, leaving to a devastating impact on the local biodiversity. Moreover, they failed to notify the Environment Agency when something had gone wrong.”