Anglian Water receives third pollution fine of 2022

Anglian Water has received its third pollution fine in 2022, this time for releasing raw sewage into Stanground Lode in Peterborough following the collapse of a sewer.

The water company and one of its contractors were fined a total of £60,000 for the incident, which resulted in the death of more than 2,400 fish.

The contractor, Danaher and Walsh, was employed by Anglian to carry out a temporary fix after a sewer owned by the water company collapsed on towards the end of December 2018.

Danaher and Walsh set up an over-pumping system to pump sewage back into the drainage system. However, around a week later in January 2019 the pumps became blocked with non-flushable items such as baby wipes and failed.

The Environment Agency (EA) said neither company reported the incident and it was instead alerted by a concerned member of the public who phoned its incident hotline.

The agency’s investigators found the release sewage into the Stanground Lode had polluted the watercourse over a stretch of 1.6 kilometres and killed more than 2,400 fish, including roach, bream, pike and European eels. The latter is currently listed as a critically endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

It said untreated sewage may have been discharged into the river for up to 10 hours and noted that level of ammonia monitored downstream were 200 times higher than average water quality standards.

Anglian Water and Danaher and Walsh both appeared at Peterborough magistrates court on 1 June and pleaded guilty to causing an illegal sewage discharge. In mitigation, Danaher and Walsh said it was unable to predict how much rag would be flushed in the time of the incident and it had never come across a blockage like the one at Stanground in 30 years of operating.

Anglian Water was fined £50,000 and ordered to pay costs of almost £24,400, whilst Danaher and Walsh was fined £10,000 and told to pay £5,000 in costs.

Yvonne Daly, an environment manager at the EA, said it was “disappointed” with the fine and would like to see “higher penalties to really deter polluters from future offences”.

“Both companies in this case failed in their environmental duties, leaving to a devastating impact on the local biodiversity,” she added. “Moreover, they failed to notify the Environment Agency when something had gone wrong.”

Giving its account of what happened following failure of the over-pumping system, a spokesperson for Anglian said: “Sewage backed up and spilt into a roadside ditch which then connected through underground pipework to the Stanground Lode. Within minutes of being alerted to the issue, a Danaher and Walsh member of staff and a pump engineer from the supplier arrived on site and resolved the problem with the pumps.

“The next day pollution was observed further downstream of the overpumps in the Riverside Mead Marina.  Anglian Water dammed the roadside ditch and used tankers to remove the affected water. Unfortunately, some small fish were killed in Riverside Mead Marina, however, because of the prompt actions of our team, the water quickly returned to normal.”

The spokesperson said the judge in the case found the offence was committed with “little or no fault on the part of Anglian Water or Danaher and Walsh and that proper procedures were in place to maintain the overpumps during the work.

“Unfortunately, a significant amount of plastics and wet wipes stopped the pumps from working only hours after they has been thoroughly checked.”

They continued: “Unflushable items like wet wipes, sanitary items and cotton buds cause significant problems in our sewer network when they are wrongly disposed of down the drain. They lead to blockages and in the worst cases, pollutions to the environment like this. We clear over 40,000 blockages a year and is why we’ve raised awareness of the issue through our Keep it Clear campaign for over a decade.

“However, we understand our responsibilities to protect the environment, and know there’s no room for complacency. We’re absolutely determined to improve further and progress towards achieving our zero pollutions goal.”

Anglian received two fines for pollution last month – one of £18,000 for an incident in Cambridgeshire in 2019 and another of £300,000 for an incident in Essex in 2016.