A BEOLEY slaughterhouse was fined £5,000 for polluting a brook with sewage and causing "serious environmental damage" by Redditch Magistrates last Wednesday.

Poultry abattoir and processing company Attwells, of Seafield Lane, pleaded guilty to a charge of contaminating Beoley Brook with trade effluent between December 16 and January 21.

The charge was brought by the Environment Agency under Section 85 of the Water Resources Act 1991 and the company was ordered to pay £1,477 costs.

For the agency, David Rees told the court an agency officer visited the brook near Cherry Pit Lane on December 16, 2003 and found it coloured brown and smelling strongly of farm effluent.

Downstream, the brook showed signs of long-term pollution with the bed covered with sewage fungus.

The officer found the effluent was coming off a spray irrigator in a field owned by Attwells and was running off the field, which was waterlogged and partially frozen.

Officers visited the following day and again on January 21 but found the pollution continuing, despite telling the company to stop and tanker the effluent away.

The pollution "caused serious environmental damage to the brook due to Attwell's failure to monitor its work," the court heard.

In mitigation, the company's solicitor told the court it had no previous convictions and asked that Attwells' early plea be taken into consideration.

The company was still working with the agency to improve future disposal methods for the waste water on the farm.

After the case, agency officer Richard Silver said: "There are strict rules governing the land-spreading of organic waste and these must be followed at all times. Attwells failed to do this, resulting in a persistent and highly polluting problem."