Water company fined £560,000 after sewage went into Essex river
Anglian Water admits failure of its treatment works led to pollution in River Wid. Incident caused the death of invertebrate and fish life across 3 kilometres.
Anglian Water has been fined a total of £563,609.21. After a treatment plant failure let millions of litres of sewage into a river killing invertebrate and fish across 3 kilometres.
An Environment Agency investigation found failures from the water company in planning, managing, and monitoring at the Doddinghurst Water Recycling Centre, near Brentwood, Essex.
This led to more than 3.9 million litres of harmful sewage discharged into the Doddinghurst Brook unchecked for 2.5 days. This damaged the river’s ecosystem as well as killing a number of a protected species, the bullhead.
Anglian Water was ordered to pay a fine of £536,000, costs of £27,439.21 and a victim surcharge of £170 at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court (24 November 2022).
The District Judge Sam Goozee described Anglian Water’s record as ‘lamentable’.
Environment Agency Chief Executive Sir James Bevan said:
We welcome this sentence. Serious pollution is a serious crime. The Environment Agency will pursue any water company that fails to uphold the law or protect nature. We will continue to press for the strongest possible penalties for those which do not.
The court heard how a fault in an aeration process at the Wyatts Green site in 2018 meant sewage discharged into the tributary of the River Wid.
This was compounded by the lack of an early alarm system which would usually alert staff of any issues. This could have been avoided, the court heard. Software, costing £205, could have been fitted to the system retrospectively when a fault occurred on the same part of the process earlier in the year.
The recycling centre, 8 miles south of Chelmsford, is responsible for treating sewage from around 6,600 local people. It discharges treated sewage into the upper Wid, also known as Doddinghurst Brook.
Environment Officer at the Environment Agency, Gavin Senior, said:
The fine handed to Anglian Water shows polluters are made to pay for damaging the environment.
The invertebrate and fish population in this area, including a protected species, suffered significantly because of this sewage pollution. It took time for the local ecosystem to recover.
The public demand tough action when it comes to water quality and we are delivering. Anyone caught breaching environmental laws faces enforcement action, up to and including prosecution.
We will always ensure the courts have all the information they need to impose appropriate sentences.
This incident happened between late September and early October 2018. A fault in the aeration process on 28 September led to sewage discharging into the river.
The malfunction was not spotted until 1 October 2018 when an operative from Anglian Water, who was visiting the site, saw the aerators were not working.
As a result, around 4 kilometres of the River Wid experienced high levels of ammonia for 6 days after the failure.
Members of the public with concerns about pollution should contact our 24 hour incident hotline on: 0800 80 70 60.
Background
The Environment Agency has significantly driven up monitoring and transparency from water companies in recent years, so that everyone can see what is going on. This includes:
- Event Duration Monitoring: this measures how often and for how long storm overflows are used;
- The Environment Agency has increased the number of overflows monitored across the network from 800 in 2016 to more than 12,700 in 2021;
- The equivalent of almost 9 in 10 storm overflows now with monitoring devices;
- All 15,000 overflows will have them by the end of 2023. All the data is published online. More info on Event Duration Monitoring can be found here;
- Flow-to-full treatment: the Environment Agency has also asked companies to install new flow monitors on more than 2,000 wastewater treatment works. This is to identify what is happening at those works during the sewage treatment process itself. This has led to a major investigation, announced in November 2021, with the Environment Agency requesting more detailed data from all wastewater treatment works;
- Storm Overflows Taskforce: through the work of the Storm Overflows Taskforce – made up of Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK – water companies have agreed to increase transparency around when and how storm overflows are used;
- Make real-time data on sewage discharges available at bathing sites all year round;
- Publish annual monitoring data on their websites so that progress in reducing their use can be tracked;
- The Environment Agency will compile monitoring data into an annual report that is easily accessible to the public. This data is also being used at an operational level to prioritise the most frequent spills for further assessment by Environment Agency officers;
- The Environment Agency has taken tough action against those companies which are breaking the rules:
- In 2021 the Environment Agency concluded 7 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies with fines of £90 million, 2 of £4 million, £2.3 million, £1.5 million, £150,000, and £540,000;
- 6 prosecutions have already concluded in 2022 with fines of £1,600,750, £300,000, £240,000, £233,000, £50,000, and £18,000, and more prosecutions are progressing in court;
- The Environment Agency has launched a major investigation into possible unauthorised spills at thousands of sewage treatment works;
- We will always seek to hold those responsible for environmental harm to account.
All Environment Agency news releases, both area and national, can be found under Announcements at www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency
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