£600,000 fine for Yorkshire Water over sewage leak

WATER supply company Yorkshire Water Services has been fined £600,000 over a sewage leak that devastated wildlife in the area of a Wakefield lake.

At Leeds Crown Court earlier this week, the company was sentenced after pleading guilty to the charge of causing a water discharge that was not authorised by an environmental permit.

Judge Guy Kearl QC found that the company had been “negligent” and the incident had caused significant pollution.

The incident occurred in October 2013 at Walton Colliery Nature Park in October 2013.

At an earlier hearing, the court heard that a rising main sewage pipe from the company’s Shay Lane pumping station burst and its contents flowed into Drain Beck, which feeds into a Walton Park fishing lake, itself a subsidiary of Barnsley Canal.

860 dead fish were removed from the lake, and water samples confirmed that the pollution was significant enough to be fatal to aquatic life. In 2014, a survey found that the lake and canal were almost totally devoid of fish. It was predicted that it will take many years to fully restore the ecosystem.

The court heard that there had been four bursts on this rising main in the previous two years, and on each occasion Yorkshire Water had put the failure down to age deterioration of the pipe.

Yorkshire Water was ordered to pay investigation and prosecution costs of £24,000 to the Environment Agency.

Mark West, environment management team leader at the Environment Agency, said after the case: “This pollution incident had a significant impact on the ecology of the lake and the canal and it could have been avoided had the company taken action to replace the pipe following earlier bursts.”