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Southern Water wipe outs river for a small fee

Posted 08/03/10 by Matt B in the News category

The Environment Agency has prosecuted Southern Water for causing untreated sewage to escape from a pumping station for a period of over 14 hours last year killing hundreds of fish in a New Forest river.

The Bartley Water is a river that passes through the New Forest. It runs from Bartley to Eling where it becomes tidal and flows out into Southampton Water. The river is despite the damage an important recreational and wildlife haven, especially at the Eling end of the river. It is also home to many protected species of fish and a diverse community of invertebrates and river life.

Sadly however the pumping station failure, wiped out whole communities of river life over a two kilometre stretch of river, including pollution tolerant species such as leeches and midges. The sewage stripped the oxygen from Bartley Water and increased the ammonia level in the watercourse to almost four times the lethal limit for fish. In many cases the species cannot be restocked and will have to be repopulated naturally.

Members of the public alerted the Environment Agency and Southern Water to the incident on 30 August 2008 after witnessing fish in distress in the Bartley Water. Southern Water sent an engineer to the site and the pumps were finally restarted at around 11.30am the following day.

Southern Water Services Ltd, who operates the Ashurst Bridge pumping station in Totton, Hampshire, appeared at Southampton Crown Court on Thursday 30 July 2009. The company pleaded guilty to the offence and was fined just £30,000 and ordered to pay costs totalling £3,575. This is equivilent to the income of arround 85 to 95 customers. Southern Water supplies water and sewerage services to approximately one million households in areas of Kent, Hampshire, Sussex and Isle of Wight. For a company that is accussed of being part of an industry that runs at unreasonably high profits this is unlikely to be little more than an acceptable running cost.

The presiding judge said the incident was very serious and that the sewage discharge was unacceptable causing substantial damage to the water course which resulted in considerable deaths.

David Robinson of the Environment Agency said: This incident had a devastating impact on wildlife living in the Bartley Water. It killed almost every fish downstream for at least a kilometre. We identified hundreds of dead fish that included brown trout, lamprey, stone loach, eels and the highly protected bullhead species. We’re grateful to the members of public that alerted us to the pollution of Bartley Water before it caused even more damage.

The incident is thought to have been caused by the failure of the primary pump and back up pumps at the Ashurst Bridge pumping station after a power surge blew a fuse. Southern Water did not respond immediately to the problem as their telemetry system indicated that both back up pumps were working as normal. The alarm system had also stopped working due to corrosion meaning that Southern Water received no warning that the storage capacity in a well at the pumping station had reached its maximum level.

David Robinson continued: Southern Water failed to prioritise the telemetry system at this sewage works despite its sensitive location. While the power surge which knocked out the pumps was clearly not the fault of the company the alarm setup was and correct measures should have been in place. Since the incident Southern Water has upgraded the response times for this station – had this been in place before the devastating impact on the watercourse could have been avoided.

Southern Water apologised for the incident and has reviewed its critical pumping station to ensure sufficient monitoring is in place to help prevent future pollution incidents. Additional alarms and early warning systems have now been installed at the Ashurst Bridge Works. Something this author sees as little more than making the right noises in a paperwork excersise that was cheaper than maintaining equipment correctly.

For example just two years ago Southern Water was fined £20.3m for poor service and deliberately misreporting information. This fine was easily absorbed by shareholders and not passed on as costs to customers who had been over charged with prices higher than they should have been. (Read More about the fine). By comparison a few thousand seems hardly worth talking about.

Members of the public are asked to report pollution incidents to the Environment Agency’s 24 hour hotline on 0800 807060.

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Southern Water wipe outs river for a small fee

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