Following a prosecution by the Environment Agency, Anglian Water has been fined £1.63 million at Chelmsford Magistrates Court after repeated sewage pollution on the River Brain over six weeks in 2022.

The Agency brought the prosecution in relation to breaches of the company’s Environmental Permit for its Braintree Water Recycling Centre between April and June 2022.

District judge Timothy King heard that Anglian Water’s local mismanagement led to a general decline in water quality between April and June that year.

In addition, the company ignored alarms telling them that poorly-treated sewage was being discharged into the river due to the faulty valve. Staff didn’t talk to each other about the incidents.

The resulting pollution stretched for nearly 14km along the Brain between Braintree and Witham.

The problem was picked up by Environment Agency monitors showing levels of toxic ammonia that were the highest recorded in the river over the previous ten years.

An Environment Agency investigation traced the source to Anglian Water’s water recycling centre in Braintree. A faulty valve, broken for a week before the first incident in April 2022, led to a semi-solid sludge, usually removed from sewage by water companies, being released into the river.

Further discharges in late May, similar to the first one, led investigators to track the poisonous substance as it snaked along the river.

Marcus Sibley, water industry regulatory manager for the Environment Agency in East Anglia, said:

“We have significantly ramped up our scrutiny of the water industry, and will take enforcement action where we find performance doesn’t meet the standards that communities deserve.

“These pollution incidents were the result of organisational failure by Anglian Water to recognise risk and act on the warning signs, resulting and resulted in them operating outside the law. They caused a significant impact on the quality of River Brain.”

Environment secretary Dame Angela Eagle said:

“Anglian Water have clearly been too slow to act in this case and the environment has paid the price. They should, and must, do better to stop pollution before it happens.”

“The government is overhauling the water system to give the public control. Tougher regulation, stronger enforcement and greater accountability, so water companies deliver for customers and the environment.”

Sitting at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on 15 October, district judge King also ordered Anglian Water to pay costs of £27,334, and a £190 surcharge.

Commenting on the prosecution, an Anglian Water spokesperson said:

“We acknowledge our procedures fell well below the high standard we set for ourselves and that this led to unacceptably high ammonia levels leaving our Braintree Water Recycling Centre on two occasions in 2022. We care deeply about any impact we have on the environment and apologise for the effect we had on the River Brain.

“Reducing pollutions and spills is our number one operational focus, and since these incidents happened four years ago, we’ve undertaken a radical review of our Water Recycling team and how it operates – a change in leadership, with a new Director of Water Recycling, culture, data intelligence, systems, processes and new investment. The Water Recycling team has acted on the learnings from this event and has additional resources and asset monitoring to help reduce the potential for such incidents.”

According to the water company, the £11 billion AMP8 investment plan it is delivering between 2025 and 2030 is putting in place more of the infrastructure to deliver the performance that customers expect, which includes improving environmental performance.

Anglian Water says it is well underway with delivering the investment to build new infrastructure and upgrade its asset base, which is one of the largest, most geographically spread asset bases in the UK water sector.

The utility manages 1,200 Water Recycling Centres, 1,100 Drinking Water Treatment Works alongside thousands of water towers, pumping stations and storage points and more than 100,000 kilometres of underground pipes and sewers.

Elsewhere, Anglian Water has admitted polluting the Thames Estuary on two occasions. The company last week pleaded guilty to discharging sewage and other harmful material off Southend in 2021 and 2022. They will be sentenced next April.