Southern and South West Water vie for top pollution spot

The two companies both have poor pollution records this year, but it will not be certain which will take top spot in the Environment Agency's annual water polluters' league until January. The firms' latest prosecutions were as follows:

Appearing before Hastings magistrates on 28 November, Southern Water pleaded guilty to causing sewage to enter the English Channel, contrary to section 85(3) of the Water Resources Act 1991.

The court heard that the Agency received a call from the member of the public in August 2002 complaining of sewage in the sea at Cooden, near Bexhill. It was a fine day and there were bathers in the water oblivious to the pollution.

An Agency officer found that sewage was being discharged across the beach from a surface water sewer following a fault at the local sewage pumping station.

Southern Water said that both the main and back-up pumps had failed and sewage had backed up into the storm tanks. Telemetry systems designed to raise the alarm as the levels rose failed, and sewage overflowed into surface water drains.

Southern pleaded in mitigation that heavy loads of sewage and rainwater had overloaded the pumps. Company staff were at the scene within 30 minutes of receiving notification from the Agency. Southern was fined £3,700 and ordered to pay costs of £1,324.

The case was the company's ninth court appearance and tenth pollution offence in 2003. Its fines now total £73,200 for the year.

The largest fine was £30,000 for a discharge of sewage into the river Beaulieu which lasted for three days and killed nearly 400 fish (ENDS Report 345, pp 53-54 ).

South West Water was fined £12,000 on 10 December after admitting discharging sub-standard sewage effluent from its Kenn and Kennford sewage works near Exeter.

Central Devon magistrates heard that samples taken by the Agency showed that the effluent consistently failed to meet the limits specified in the company's consent to discharge to the river Kenn.

Filter beds at the works were functioning poorly, and one effluent sample taken in April 2003 exceeded the consent limit by almost 15 times. The river downstream was also found to be suffering from low dissolved oxygen and high ammonia levels.

South West Water was fined £12,000 - its largest fine this year - and ordered to pay £780 in costs.

The company has ten offences and nine court appearances this year, according to ENDS' calculations. However, South West's fines total only £41,000 compared to Southern's £73,200.