Northumbrian Water pays out £165,000 after waste polluted river

Horsley Water Treatment Works is being replaced as part of a £55m upgrade

A water company has agreed to a six-figure pay-out after it mistakenly discharged waste from a treatment works which then flowed into the River Tyne.

The unauthorised discharge had been happening sporadically for about eight weeks in 2018 at Kitty's Burn, near Ovingham, the Environment Agency said.

Northumbrian Water has agreed to pay £165,000 to the Tyne Rivers Trust, which looks after the area.

The firm apologised and said measures were in place to remove future risk.

The incident happened after it temporarily contracted a machine to separate liquids at its Horsley Water Treatment Works to help cope with increased demand.

However, staff used old drainage plans and mistakenly connected it to a surface water drain rather than a foul sewer, the Environment Agency said.

As a result, liquid from the process called centrate, which is produced when water is removed from sludge, was discharged into a drain which led to Kitty's Burn, and then flowed about 1.3km into the River Tyne.

Northumbrian Water voluntarily submitted an Enforcement Undertaking to the Environment Agency.

'Extremely sorry'

Officials attended the site in November 2018 and found almost eight million litres of centrate had been discharged over the eight-week period.

Sampling indicated there had been minimal impact on the ecology of the river.

Richard Warneford, wastewater director at Northumbrian Water, said: "We're extremely sorry that this happened, and as soon as the issue was discovered, our teams acted quickly to minimise the amount of discharge that was released.

"We work incredibly hard to avoid all pollution incidents. However, in the very rare event something like this should occur, we support the use of Enforcement Undertakings which allow the local community to benefit from the funding offered."

The company was fined £240,000 at Newcastle Crown Court for polluting Coundon Burn in March 2017, and in October 2021 was fined £540,000 at Durham Crown Court for polluting a watercourse that runs through Heads Hope Dene in Castle Eden in May 2017.