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Severn Trent Water has been fined more than £2 million after illegally discharging 260 million litres of raw sewage into the River Trent.
The incident occurred following failures at the company’s Strongford Wastewater Treatment Works (WTW) near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, between November 2019 and February 2020.
On 14 February 2020 a report was received by the Environment Agency from Severn Trent that there was an issue with the screw pumps at the inlet to Strongford WTW.
The company said that two of the three pumps had failed, and this was causing crude sewage to go to the storm overflow and from there to the River Trent.
One of the screw pumps had previously failed back in December 2019 due to a gear box malfunction and a replacement was in the process of being made in Germany as there was no supplier in the UK.
During a case brought by the Environment Agency at Cannock Magistrates, Stafford, on Monday (19 February) the court heard how Flow to Full Treatment (the level of sewage and rain, or flow, that a sewage treatment works must treat before it is permitted to discharge) limits had been altered manually by staff at Strongford and with the full knowledge of the site manager.
The Environment Agency added: “This was evidenced within Severn Trent Water’s own logbooks for the site and had been happening for some time. This was a breach of the environmental permit and changes to the FFT limits were recorded on 18 different dates between November 2019 to February 2020.
“A second pump then failed on 14 February 2020 again due to an issue with the gearbox. This meant that there was only one functioning pump and this couldn’t cope with any increases in rainfall, increases that caused sewage to prematurely overflow into the river.”
It was during this incident, the Environment Agency said, that approximately 700–1,000 litres per second of untreated sewage discharged into the river.
“It was pure good luck,” said the agency, that Storm Ciara resulted in higher river levels, thus reducing the impact. It added that a similar pollution incident at a downstream pumping station had previously led to a “major fish kill”.
“However, it took five days for the site to come back into compliance, as an emergency pump had to be sent from Holland,” the Environment Agency added.
After pleading guilty at a previous hearing to two charges of illegally discharging raw sewage, the company was fined £1,072,000 and £1 million plus costs of £16,476.67 and a £181 victim surcharge.
District judge Kevin Grego said: “The risk as set out above was real. The amount of untreated sewage over more than five days flowing into the water system was enormous.
“Those who live in the affected area and pay STW to provide clean drinking water and safely treat sewage would not consider it to be otherwise.”
Robbie Moore, the minister for water and rural growth, said: “Severn Trent’s fine will be put into our Water Restoration Fund, which will channel money directly back into projects that improve water quality. And through our Plan for Water we are delivering more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement – ensuring those who pollute our waters are held to account.”
Adam Shipp, a senior environment officer at the Environment Agency and who led the investigation, said: “Severn Trent were fortunate that this incident did not cause a catastrophic pollution in the Trent as the river already had high flows when the discharge occurred.
“Our investigation showed that their contingency plans were woefully inadequate with a major pump being out of action for 52 days prior to the incident.
“Even though Severn Trent knew Storm Clara and Storm Dennis were about to arrive they did not think to proactively source alternative pumps and get them to site.
“When the second of the three pumps failed it made sourcing and installing a replacement pump very difficult and as a consequence the works was not properly functioning for another five days and eight hours.
“This is not the sort of response we would expect to see from a professional multi-national company and as a consequence they have now put in place on site measures to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again.”
Much as I applaud the Environment Agency for enforcing this action against Severn/Trent water, I do have some reservations about the entire business landscape that water companies operate within in the UK. The water companies cleaned up their act, and consequently our rivers, a long time ago. We had rivers with actual fish in them!
Then we (the long-term duped UK populace) voted in a government that has worked tirelessly to eliminate anything that might put a business off from investing within the water sector.
The regulations put in place to prevent destruction of our rivers were nullified by allowing raw discharge under “emergency conditions”. So it’s easy to see why the water companies might feel “protected” from prosecution.