Polluting a brook with clay material from its Knutton Quarry site at Newcastle-under-Lyme has cost Ibstock Bricks more than £33,000.
The company, which pleaded guilty to breaching the site’s environmental discharge consent, was fined £27,000 and ordered to pay costs of £6,501.25 and a £120 victim surcharge.
Stafford Magistrates’ Court was told that the incident occurred on 15 August 2013 when the discharge equipment at the site failed. Tests revealed that there were 10,600mg of suspended solids per litre of water along the 3.5km polluted stretch of watercourse, when the permitted level is 50mg.
>The Environment Agency revealed that there was no failsafe device installed to ensure that polluting material was not pumped into the brook after an equipment failure. This had now been rectified.
