Water firm pays out almost £19k

A discharge of ammonia from a sewage treatment works has cost Severn Trent Water £18,893 in fines and costs

The permit for the Bishops Castle site in Telford restricts the amount of ammonia that it can discharge to not more than 10mg per litre of water during the seven months from October to the end of April (5 mg/l at all other times), but the 12 samples taken between March 2010 and March 2011 revealed ammonia above the permitted level three times.

The Environment Agency says sewage treatment works must meet the discharge limits for harmful substances set out in their environmental permits at least 95% of the time.

Severn Trent blamed the breach on management failures and said that the treatment works had also been affected by cold weather in the winter of 2011, and that it had encountered problems treating effluent from a local abattoir, which subsequently closed.