Millions of litres of raw sewage were illegally pumped into one of England’s most famous lakes after a fault, documents seen by the BBC have revealed.
United Utilities failed to stop the illegal pollution of Windermere, in the Lake District, for 10 hours in February and did not report the incident to the Environment Agency until 13 hours after it started.
An almost identical incident occurred at the same location in 2022.
The firm says it took urgent steps to resolve the incident in February.
Illegal, you say?
Time to put some directors in prison, I say.
“fault”
“The firm says it took urgent steps to resolve the incident in February.”
But not in 2022.
The fault in our dividends.
Fuck’s sake
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That wasn’t the case in this incident, meaning this release of sewage into the lake was illegal.Insiders at United Utilities have told the BBC that, in total, the emergency pumps operated for six hours at nearly 500 litres per second - dumping more than 10 million litres of raw sewage into the middle of the lake.The water firm says it did not measure the volume of untreated sewage pumped into the lake, but it says the BBC’s estimate of the scale of the discharge is unreliable.The company says the incident “was caused by an unexpected fault in the telecommunications network in the area, which United Utilities was not notified about”.
The algae is caused by a build-up of phosphorus in the lake, partly caused by both treated and untreated sewage.Evidence from the February pollution incident suggests that United Utilities failed to take quick and appropriate action to limit the amount of untreated pollution that was released.Insiders at the water company told the BBC the company would have automatically received notification of the fault shortly after it occurred.
A spokesperson said: “As soon as we discovered this fault was affecting the Glebe Road pumping station, our engineers took urgent steps to resolve the situation.”Matt Staniek from Save Windermere, which campaigns for an end to sewage pollution, told the BBC that sewage “remains the single biggest threat to England’s largest lake”.“Time and time again the same thing keeps happening here in Windermere: United Utilities pollutes the lake and the Environment Agency turns a blind eye to it.”Equipment failures and pollution incidents like this are supposed to be reported immediately to the EA so they can assess the impact and investigate.
"If these incidents are reported late then it stops us witnessing the pollution and collecting evidence, and then we have to let them off with a slap on the wrist rather than the more serious punishments that they probably deserve.
But leaked documents suggest the EA failed to investigate this incident thoroughly or challenge the water company’s account of events.The agency’s attending officer also tested the water on the lake shore, rather than from where the sewage had been discharged, and he reported “no visual impact found”.The Environment Agency investigation did not work out the total duration or volume of the sewage pumped into Windermere.It subsequently categorised the pollution as a “minor” incident and the only enforcement action taken was a routine “site warning” issued three weeks later.The investigation appeared to be closed.However, after the BBC questioned the Environment Agency about the incident, a spokesperson said it was now investigating.“We are undertaking a thorough investigation into the incident which involves examing further evidence from United Utilities.
If any water company is found to be in breach of an environmental permit the Environment Agency will take the appropriate enforcement action up to and including a criminal prosecution.”
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