Photo credit: Anthony de Sigley – Own work, Public Domain
Southern Water has pleaded guilty to two environmental permit breaches after a dark plume of pollution entered the River Test in Hampshire. The company admitted the charges at Medway Magistrates Court on 14 July, with two further charges to be taken into consideration. Sentencing will follow at a date yet to be set.
How it was found
Environment Agency officers were carrying out routine water quality checks at Stockbridge on 13 March 2023 when they noticed dark particles in the water. Following the trail upstream, they found the colour and intensity thickening, and traced the source nearly four miles to Southern Water’s Fullerton wastewater treatment works. The discolouration, which carried a reddish tinge, stretched across half the width of the chalk stream.
Sampling confirmed suspended solids at more than triple the permitted limit of 50 milligrammes per litre, and iron well above the allowed 8,000 micrograms per litre. Water quality had improved markedly by 24 March, 11 days after the Environment Agency acted.
Failures at the works
Site staff told officers that only one of the four tanks used to remove sludge and scum was working properly, and that one had been awaiting repair for over a year. The pumps sending effluent to deep sand beds, which filter out finer contaminants, were also faulty. The site diary showed the technical problems had been logged days earlier.
Southern Water did not alert the Environment Agency when it became aware of the issue, nor about the failing equipment behind it. The company subsequently acknowledged it had missed at least two opportunities to report, that its procedures had not been followed, and that its process for raising concerns internally and with the regulator about effluent quality had failed both before and on the day.
Simon Moody of the Environment Agency said the company’s safeguards had failed one by one, which he called unacceptable. Chalk streams, he said, “should be gin clear”, and thorough maintenance and tested processes would have prevented the incident.
A rare habitat
Chalk streams are rare globally and the Test is among England’s best known. Salmon born in the river are genetically unique, making them more vulnerable and less resilient than other populations, and they depend on clean, well-oxygenated water.
The prosecution comes as the Environment Agency reports meeting its target of inspecting 10,000 water company assets across the sector this year. Of those, more than 730 were checks of Southern Water sites, 68 per cent of which were compliant with their permits, and officers issued the company with over 400 improvement actions.
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