Severn Trent hit with £2m fine for pollution

Strongford Sewage Treatment Works serves just under 450,000 people

Severn Trent Water has been fined more than £2m for "recklessly" allowing large amounts of raw sewage to enter the River Trent.

Its Strongford Treatment Works discharged more than 260 million litres of sewage, the equivalent of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools, between November 2019 and February 2020.

An Environment Agency spokesman said the company was fortunate the incident did not cause catastrophic pollution in the Staffordshire river.

A Severn Trent spokesperson apologised for the incident and said it accepted "full responsibility and regret the course of events that led to this isolated issue".

The court verdict comes as Birmingham comedian Joe Lycett takes on the water companies over sewage pollution in a new documentary on Channel 4.

Storms averted crisis

Cannock Magistrates Court heard two of the three pumps that stopped sewage from entering the storm overflow tanks failed from December 2019 and February 2020.

It took five days for the site to come back into compliance after an emergency pump arrived from Holland.

Under normal circumstances the amount of untreated sewage entering the watercourse would have been detrimental as a similar previous incident had led to a major fish kill.

However, due to high water levels from Storm Ciara and Storm Denis, Severn Trent reported no evidence had been seen of any environmental impacts.

District Judge Kevin Grego said: "The amount of untreated sewage over more than five days flowing into the water system was enormous."

Senior Environment Officer Adam Shipp said: "Severn Trent were fortunate that this incident did not cause a catastrophic pollution in the Trent as the river already had high flows when the discharge occurred."

"Lessons have been learnt and action taken to address the local site issues and we’ll continue to implement our wastewater recycling management system which operates to the highest standards of compliance," Severn Trent said.

The company had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to two charges of illegally discharging raw sewage. The judge fined the company £1,072,000 and £1,000,000 plus costs of £16,476.67 and a victim’s surcharge of £181.