A water company has been fined a half-million pounds after a sewage spill near a children’s playground killed 2,160 fish.

Wessex Water pleaded guilty to a total of three illegal discharges, two in Wiltshire and one in Somerset and was fined at Swindon Magistrates Court on November 11.

Between July 29 and August 2, 2018, sewage leaked into a nature conservation area at Bowerhill Lodge Sewage Pumping Station near Melksham.

The 54.5-hour sewage leak killed nearly all the fish for over one kilometre in Clakers Brook including eels, lamprey and bullheads - all threatened, and listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The company did not report this to the Environment Agency immediately. 

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An investigation found that excess cables being stored on a hook became entangled in pump equipment and this was not detected by alarms and telemetry as they were not working.

An expert, Ms Poole, said: “While Wessex Water’s combination of failures could be deemed unlucky, it is more symptomatic of a systemic failure. Layers of protection were in place that did not function as designed.”

The leak happened near a playground, although it did not affect the playground. She said: “We’re not talking about children playing in sewage. It was near to a playground.”

District judge (magistrates’ court) Joanna Dickens said Wessex Water did not show “reasonable care” and was negligent, causing “significant harm”.

However, it was not in the highest category of harm, as it had not severely affected human health.

Further investigation found that there had been other discharges from Bowerhill Lodge earlier that year between March 27 and April 3 2018.

These discharges were not reported to the Environment Agency and the extent of their damage is not known - but the judge concluded the damage was likely not heavy as otherwise it would have been discovered.

In the third incident a rising main (pressurised sewage pipe) carrying untreated waste burst killing fish at Wick St Lawrence sewage treatment works near Weston-super-Mare on or before August 20, 2018.

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The 45-year-old pipe had been identified by Wessex Water as needing monitoring having failed in 2011, but no monitoring was installed.

District Judge Dickens said not installing monitoring was “clearly” cost-saving for the company.

Flow pressure monitoring was put in after the incident and there have been no incidents since.

District Judge Dickens said that while there was no long-lasting impact to the environment in this case “it was negligent because of the failures at this specific location and the failure to install monitoring equipment at an earlier time”.

Between 2015 and 2023, Wessex Water caused 28 serious pollution incidents, 6 of which have arisen from rising mains - accounting for 21 per cent of serious incidents during that period.

Wessex Water has predicted it would need to replace its rising mains at nine times its current rate to remain stable.

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Janine Maclean, Environment Agency senior environment officer, said: “Wessex Water’s rising mains are ageing and becoming vulnerable to bursting and are an area of increasing concern to the Environment Agency, presenting risk to people and the environment.

“Monitoring is still reliant on failure, and we would like to see the company significantly increase the level of investment it makes to proactively replace rising mains before they fail.”

In deciding her penalty district judge Dickens said: “[Wessex Water] have a good reputation in terms of their environment performance, in terms of the water companies as a whole. In fact, they are one of the top performing water companies for matters of this kind.”

Wessex Water was fined £500,000, with £60,000 in costs plus VAT and a victim surcharge of £170.

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