The Environment Agency has prosecuted Southern Water for causing sewage to enter the Bevern Stream at Barcombe in East Sussex during September last year.
Southern Water pleaded guilty to the offence at Lewes Magistrates Court on Monday 23 June 2008 and was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay costs of £845.
The Court heard that on 14 September 2007 the Environment Agency received a report of potential pollution at the Bevern Stream at Knowlands Farm in Barcombe. A thick blanket of sewage fungus was covering at least 500 metres of the stream bed and this discharge was traced to a ditch up to the old sewage treatment works at Barcombe Cross. When Environment Agency officers arrived at the scene, two Southern Water employees were on site working to remove a blockage that was causing raw sewage to enter to the ditch.
A sample of the sewage taken by the Environment Agency showed that the discharge level was almost that of neat effluent. The Bevern Stream is an important conservation area which provides habitat for sea trout to migrate upstream to breed.
When interviewed in November 2007, a Southern Water representative confirmed that the incident was caused by a large blockage of fat and debris in the sewerage system pipes which resulted in the sewage discharging into the ditch.
Carina Strutt of the Environment Agency said: “Southern Water failed to decommission the old sewage treatment works properly and also to check their sewers for blockages, causing preventable contamination over a long stretch of the stream. Sewage entering a watercourse can have a devastating effect particularly in such a sensitive area and one which is also popular with local anglers.”
In summing up the case Magistrates took into account Southern Water’s early guilty plea and prompt response to the incident, accepting that the pollution would not cause long term damage to the site.
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