Anglian Water was fined a total of £563,609.21and ordered to pay £27,439.21 in costs last week after a treatment plant failure in 2018 let millions of litres of sewage into a river killing invertebrate and fish across 3 kilometres.
The court cases follows 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.
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.
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.
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 on 24 November 2022.
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 incident happened between late September and early October 2018 when 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.
Passing sentence in court, District Judge Sam Goozee described Anglian Water’s record as ‘lamentable’.
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