The company Severn Trent was penalized with a fine of over £2 million for causing harmful pollution to the River Trent due to their negligence.
The Environment Agency has issued a fine of over £2m to Severn Trent for contaminating the River Trent in the vicinity of Stoke. The agency criticized the company’s storm emergency protocols as severely lacking.
A significant quantity of untreated sewage was released into the river from the Strongford wastewater treatment facility located near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, from November 2019 to February 2020.
On Monday, Judge Kevin Grego of the Cannock magistrates court declared that the water supplier had not adequately established and implemented a sufficient contingency plan.
Severn Trent had admitted to violating two charges of releasing untreated sewage.
According to the PA news agency, the company was penalized with a fine of £1,072,000 and an additional £1 million for costs of £16,476 and a victim’s surcharge of £181. The company was found to have illegally discharged around 240 million litres of raw sewage.
Two out of the three screw pumps at Strongford works malfunctioned, causing sewage to enter the river.
Adam Shipp, a senior officer from the Environment Agency who was in charge of the investigation, stated that Severn Trent was lucky that this event did not result in a major pollution of the Trent River, as the river was already experiencing high levels of water flow at the time of the discharge.
After our investigation, we discovered that their emergency plans were severely lacking. One of their main pumps had been out of commission for 52 days before the event. Despite being aware of the impending arrival of Storm Clara and Storm Dennis, Severn Trent failed to actively secure backup pumps and bring them to the site.
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“When the second pump out of three stopped working, it posed a challenge to find and install a replacement pump. As a result, the system was not fully functional for an additional five days and eight hours.”
“This is not the sort of response we would expect to see from a professional multinational company and as a consequence they have now put in place onsite measures to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again.”
Source: theguardian.com
