Thames fined £3 million over pollution incident

Thames Water has been fined more than £3 million after millions of litres of raw sewage flooded two rivers near Gatwick in West Sussex.

During a hearing at Lewes Crown Court, judge Christine Laing said Thames deliberately misled the Environment Agency during its investigation into the incident, which occurred in October 2017.

The incident was the result of equipment failure at the company’s sewage treatment works in Crawley, resulting in the deaths of almost 1,400 fish in Gatwick Stream and the River Mole.

A pump at the site was erroneously activated, leading to a storm lagoon discharging sewage and rainwater into the stream, despite there being no significant rainfall.

Despite Thames eventually pleading guilty to four breaches of environmental law the court heard how in the days following the incident, the water company claimed its infrastructure had nothing to do with the pollution.

Although investigators found almost 1,400 dead fish, the EA believes this was a fraction of the numbers killed as more would have been lost in vegetation and deep pools or eaten by birds and other animals.

One EA officer said the Mole was “carpeted” with dead fish.

Jamie Lloyd, a senior environment officer at the EA and who led the investigation, said: “Thames Water missed several opportunities to prevent this pollution incident from occurring. Staff appear to have been oblivious to malfunctions at the sewage treatment works leading up to it and did nothing to intervene. When the alarm was raised, no decisive action was taken until the damage was done.

“Thames Water failed to take responsibility for the incident until several years later – and didn’t provide vital information when requested by the Environment Agency during our investigation.

“We brought this case due to the major environmental impact caused, and because it was entirely avoidable. Thames Water failed to have adequate systems in place to manage the pollution-risk from their site and didn’t respond to alarms.”

The EA added that the storm lagoon was only three-quarters the legally required size, meaning it filled up with sewage earlier, discharged into the rivers sooner, giving less protection to fish.

Furthermore, it added, staff consistently rated equipment as “unsatisfactory” in the months before the incident and several weeks afterwards.

Thames pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to four breaches of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 regarding the pollution and operation of Crawley sewage treatment works between 9 and 14 October 2017.

In addition to the £3.34 million fine, Thames was ordered to pay the EA’s costs of £128,961.05.

Prosecutions of Thames by the EA for pollution incidents have now led to fines of £35.7 million since 2017.