A FAILURE to check and maintain an underground pipe, which led to a Bromsgrove brook being polluted, resulted in Severn Trent Water being prosecuted by the Environment Agency and fined £2,000.

Severn Trent pleaded guilty to a charge of causing fuel to pollute the Sugar Brook when it appeared at Redditch magistrates last Wednesday. The firm was also ordered to pay costs of £1,245.12.

Speaking after the case Michael Morris, of the Environment Agency, said: "The very high clean up cost associated with this incident should highlight to companies the importance of ensuring that all underground oil pipework is rigorously inspected on a frequent basis and that accurate records are kept of oil-bank levels."

Kalbir Gill, for the agency, told magistrates that on September 27, 2002, reports were received that red oil was flowing from a pipe into the brook just outside Bromsgrove.

An officer arrived to find a "copious quantity" of red gas-oil flowing from a surface water drain into the Sugar Brook at Fish House Lane, Stoke Pound.

Source

Initially, investigations to find the source were unsuccessful, including searches at Severn Trent's Sugarbrook depot 200 metres away where oil is stored in two 44,000 litre tanks. However, these were isolated and four public drinking-water boreholes at the site, were closed down.

On October 4, the water company excavated the site and discovered that a section of 30-year-old pipe from one of the tanks had at least seven holes in it.

Further investigations revealed that water leaking from a collapsed field drain nearby had corroded the oil pipe.

In mitigation Mark Scoggins, for Severn Trent, said the company had entered an early guilty plea and had carried out "significant" excavations to find the leak at a cost of up to £100,000.

Procedures would also be implemented to prevent similar incidents in future, he added.