South West Water has been ordered to pay more than £50,000 in fines and costs after a bank holiday sewage leak killed fish in a Devon stream.
The water company was carrying out maintenance on the small sewage works at Woodbury, near Exmouth, in August 2013 when heavy rain led to a spillage of raw sewage into a small brook on the outskirts of the village.
A member of the public alerted the Environment Agency who found a 90 metre section of the stream polluted with sewage fungus and recovered a handful of dead fish from its bed.
South West Water had known that the works on Rydon Lane, Woodbury, were struggling to cope during their maintenance work but failed to have sewage taken away by tanker, Exeter Crown Court was told.
The company, which is based at Exeter, admitted allowing sewage to pollute the brook and failing to notify the Environment Agency of the illegal discharge.
They were fined £47,500 with £3,200 costs by Judge Phillip Wassall, who described their failure to prevent the spill as negligent.
He said:"South West Water accepts it should have foreseen this and did not do so and were plainly negligent even though the combination of problems that led to it were not of their making."
Miss Judith Constable, prosecuting, said the Environment Agency were alerted to the problem by a member of the public who was concerned about pollution of the small waterway over the August bank holiday last year.
A number of dead fish were found in the stream and levels of sewage were found to be well above those permitted. The cause was found to be a combination of heavy rain and problems arising from work at the plant.
She said the company has 109 previous convictions but this was the first to relate to the sewage works at Woodbury, which had a previous unblemished record since its opening in 2004.
Mr Martin Meeke, QC, defending, said the works had been affected by an unfortunate combination of factors.
A reed bed filtration system was temporarily out of action and one of the aeration tanks was under repair after a fault had been found in a paddle wheel a few days earlier.
He said the danger of a spillage into the stream should have been anticipated and the some of the sewage removed by tanker. When the problem arose they pumped oxygen into the stream to reduce its effect.
Mr Meeke said the impact on the stream was very limited, with only a handful of fish killed, and tests showed it returned to normal within a week of the incident.
