Pollution breach costs Shropshire border firm £40,000

Kerry Ingredients, which has a factory on Clee Hill Road in Burford, near Tenbury Wells, was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay court costs in excess of £30,000 after being found to have breached the legal limit for waste put into the sewerage system on three occasions within five months.

Officials at Severn Trent Water have claimed the company's actions could have resulted in serious pollution of the River Teme.

It was only because of prompt action by operatives at Tenbury Sewage Treatment Works that the industrial waste did not make its way into the river, a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest, a spokesman said.

Representatives of Kerry Ingredients pleaded guilty to three counts of discharging trade effluent into a public sewer without consent or other authorisation between December 6 2012 and March 4 last year. The company was fined £4,000 for each breach and ordered to pay costs at a hearing at Worcester Magistrates Court.

Simon Cocks, waste water services director for Severn Trent Water, said: "It is important we prosecute offenders in appropriate cases and take action to recover costs where possible.The limits we set to regulate trade discharges are calculated to ensure they do not adversely effect the capacity of our sewage works to efficiently treat sew-age, so exceeding this consent is not only illegal, it can also damage the sewage treatment process and so risk causing harm to the environment."

In the past six months Severn Trent has won cases against seven different firms in the Midlands for making illegal discharges.

Frank Hayes, speaking for the Kerry Group Plc, said:?"Once we found that we had an issue we made significant efforts to alleviate the problem and we are now looking towards making additional investment on the site to facilitate additional treatment of waste water."