Thames fined £2.3m for “entirely foreseeable” incident

Thames Water has been fined £2.3m with some £90,000 in costs after pleading guilty to an “entirely foreseeable” incident led to a stream polluted by sewage killing more an 1,100 fish and other freshwater life.

Aylesbury Crown Court heard that failure to address equipment faults at a sewage-treatment plant led to sewage with high levels of ammonia being released into Fawley Court Ditch at Henley-on-Thames in 2016.

Thames Water’s treatment works at Henley was found to lack adequate monitoring “made worse by staff not responding to alarms highlighting faults in the process,” according to the Environment Agency which brought the case.

Judge Francis Sheridan said Thames Water had showed “high negligence” in the the pollution and the events leading up to it. The company should have reacted to the warnings “long before” they did, according to the judge.

In its investigation, the Environment Agency found that equipment to aerate effluent and reduce ammonia were not working while probes measuring the treatment process were also out of order.

Agency officers found oxygen used to control the treatment was at “dangerously low” levels 24 hours before the incident and alarms warning of problems were given a delayed response or none at all.