South West Water can boast a history of failures and non-compliance at three sewage treatment works, Bodmin Magistrates were told.
“Even small sewage treatment works’ require maintenance and investment and should not be neglected by site operators,” said Louise Weller for the Environment Agency.
She explained how, when officers inspected one of the works, in Treskinnick, near Bude, Cornwall, on 19 May 2011 they noticed the filter bed was failing to function. The final effluent was ‘odorous and black’, and was polluting a nearby stream.
Copious amounts of sewage fungus were to be found on the bed of the stream, and a sample of final effluent indicated the sewage was poorly treated.
The pollution had killed most of the aquatic life in the stream over a distance of 600 metres, and had also impacted the Wanson Water further down the catchment.
This larger watercourse flows into Widemouth Bay, a popular surfing beach, some 2.5 km from the treatment works.
The Treskinnick works serves a small rural hamlet of around 30 people, and the latest breach follows previous problems in both 2009 and 2010, when the site failed initial inspections by the Agency.
The second works, at Black Dog near Crediton, Devon, had breached its consent on three separate occasions in 2010, and again in July 2011 when it failed an inspection.
And finally, the court heard, there were a number of breaches at the Holcombe Rogus works, near Wellington, Somerset, between June 2010 and March 2011.
Despite the Environment Agency notifying South West Water of the sub-standard conditions at all three treatment works, caused by an apparent lack of maintenance, insufficient action was taken to rectify the problems and improve the level of compliance at each site.
“These pollution incidents were avoidable and resulted from a failure on the part of South West Water to maintain these sites in accordance with their Environmental Permits,” explained Ms Weller.
After pleading guilty to a total of five offences under the Environmental Permitting Act 2010, magistrates fined South West Water, of Peninsula House, Rydon Lane, Exeter, a total of £21,000 and ordered the company to pay £12,000 costs
