Severn Trent Water fined more than £2 million over river sewage pollution

Huge amounts of raw sewage were discharged into the Trent from Strongford Wastewater Treatment Works near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

Severn Trent Water has been fined more than £2 million for polluting the River Trent near Stoke .

Huge amounts of raw sewage were discharged into the river from Strongford Wastewater Treatment Works (WTW) near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, between November 2019 and February 2020.

Severn Trent Water had previously pleaded guilty to two charges of illegally discharging raw sewage.

The company was fined £1,072,000 and £1,000,000 plus costs of £16,476.67 and a victim’s surcharge of £181.

Approximately 240 million litres of raw sewage were discharged illegally by the company, equivalent to 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The sewage flowed into the river after two of the three screw pumps failed at Strongford WTW.

• Adam Shipp, a senior environment officer at the Environment Agency who led the investigation, said: “Severn Trent were fortunate that this incident did not cause a catastrophic pollution in the Trent as the river already had high flows when the discharge occurred.

• “Our investigation showed that their contingency plans were woefully inadequate, with a major pump being out of action for 52 days prior to the incident.

• “Even though Severn Trent knew Storm Clara and Storm Dennis were about to arrive they did not think to proactively source alternative pumps and get them to site

• “When the second of the three pumps failed it made sourcing and installing a replacement pump very difficult and as a consequence the works was not properly functioning for another five days and eight hours.

• “This is not the sort of response we would expect to see from a professional multinational company and as a consequence they have now put in place on-site measures to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again.”

Source: The Shropshire Star 20th February 2024