Southern Water has been fined £330,000 after raw sewage escaped into a stream near Southampton for what the company admitted could have been nearly 20 hours.

Almost 2,000 fish were killed as faulty equipment at a pumping station sent untreated effluent into the environment at Waltham Chase on the edge of the South Downs.

Sitting at West Hampshire magistrates’ court, district judge Nicholas Wattam heard relay equipment at Little Bull pumping station had been wrongly programmed.

This led to a pump failing. When a second one wouldn’t start, sewage and other hazardous substances were diverted up through two manholes, across fields and into Shawford Lake Stream, leading to the popular YMCA Fairthorne Manor.

In the days after the incident in July 2019, investigators from the Environment Agency found pools of dirty water and polluted matter and vegetation in local fields. The stream was cloudy as pollution spread across nearly 3km. Ammonia levels in the water were 25 times the legal limit.

Scores of brown trout and other dead fish continued to be discovered. Tens became hundreds as the scale of the pollution emerged.

Investigators believe the illegal flow of contaminated matter continued over public land and the stream for between five and 20 hours.

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