Thames Water fined greater than £3m over sewage spill that turned rivers black close to Gatwick Airport

Thames Water have been fined greater than £3m after admitting polluting rivers.

The firm, which provides one in four people in Britain with water, had pleaded responsible to 4 costs regarding illegally discharging waste.

It was fined £3.3m at Lewes Crown Court on Tuesday.

The court docket heard “millions of litres” of undiluted sewage was pumped into the Gatwick Stream and River Mole between Crawley in West Sussex and Horley in Surrey on 11 October, 2017.

The listening to was informed that the spill turned the water “black” and killed greater than 1,000 fish.

Judge Christine Laing KC stated that she believed the agency had proven a “deliberate attempt” to mislead the Environment Agency over the incident, by omitting water readings and submitting a report back to the regulator denying duty.

The firm has beforehand been fined £32.4m for air pollution incidents within the Thames Valley and south-west London between 2017 and 2021.

During the primary day of the listening to on Monday, the court docket heard how a storm pump at Crawley Sewage Treatment Works web site was unexpectedly diverting sewage to its storm tank for 21 hours and went “unnoticed”.

Prosecutor Sailesh Mehta estimated untreated sewage was spilling into the river for six and a half hours after no alarm was raised.

When an alarm was raised the lead technician was unreachable as they had been ready for a brand new cell phone.

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Eyewitness accounts learn in court docket stated how they noticed the river flip “black” and “grey”, with “huge numbers of dead fish” seen within the water.

Nearly 1,400 useless fish had been recovered from the rivers by the Environment Agency following the incident.

In an announcement launched after the decision, interim co-CEO of Thames Water Cathryn Ross stated: “We are deeply sorry for the entirely unacceptable pollution incident into the Gatwick Stream and River Mole six years ago.

“The incident occurred due to the running of a storm pump in error. The pump activated when there was no operational need for it to do so. This had never happened on this site before and it has not happened since,” she stated.

“It should not have happened, and we deeply regret the incident. I would also like to express my sincere apologies for those aspects of our response to the incident six years ago that led to the finding that we misled the regulator.

“We absolutely settle for that we made vital errors and exercised poor judgment on the time, and we’re genuinely sorry for that.

“To make up for the harm caused, so far as it is possible, we have made voluntary payments totalling £1m to three local organisations to fund projects including the development of a local catchment plan and carrying out fish passage and habitat works.”

A £33m plan to enhance the Crawley web site has been put in place because the incident, in accordance with Ms Roberts, with goals to finish it by the tip of March 2025.

New programs have additionally been rolled out throughout different Thames Water websites to stop such incidents occurring once more.

The tremendous comes as the corporate faces considerations over its future amid a mounting £14bn debt.

Thames Water’s chief government Sarah Bentley stepped down with rapid impact final week after she gave up her bonus as a result of firm’s environmental efficiency.

In 2021, Southern Water was fined a document £90m for practically 7,000 incidents of unlawful discharge of sewage throughout Hampshire, Kent and Sussex.