The waste company Suez Recycling and Recovery UK Ltd has been ordered to pay more than £500,000 in fines and costs for a series of offences at Connon Bridge landfill site near Liskeard - at the time of the offences the firm was known as SITA UK Ltd.

The Environment Agency has accepted an offer of £160,000 for an enforcement undertaking from brewer Heineken UK following a pollution incident at their cider factory in Hereford, which saw several thousand fish killed.

Walsh Mushrooms, a mushroom packaging and distribution company operating at the Vale Park industrial estate in Evesham, appeared in Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court  on 31 January and pleaded guilty to an offence of polluting the nearby Battleton Brook with the effluent of rotting mushrooms.

The company was fined £50,000, ordered to pay costs of £8,888.16, along with a £170 victim surcharge.

The prosecution was brought by the Environment Agency, following reports of pollution of the brook in April and May in 2015.

On 24 April 2015, an Environment Agency officer visited the Battleton Brook in Evesham following a report it had turned black with a foul odour. The officer found the brook heavily polluted with organic matter, causing low levels of oxygen. Some frogs and a significant number of invertebrates downstream of Vale Park had been killed as a result of the pollution incident.

Officers, along with staff from Severn Trent Water Limited, identified the source of the pollution as a skip full of decomposing mushrooms on the Walsh Mushroom site, which was leaking into a surface water drain. Investigations of the drainage system suggested this had been ongoing for a number of days. The company was advised to remove the skip, undertake a cleaning operation, and conduct a full inspection of the site drainage system.

The Environment Agency stated that the company had failed to carry out the site drainage survey within a reasonable time after 24 April 2015. As a result, on 14 May 2015, officers attended the premises of Walsh Mushrooms again to examine the site drainage system and discovered that similar effluent was continuing to flow into it.

A representative of the company was interviewed and accepted that no training had been given to staff regarding the function or maintenance of the site drainage. No training had been given to staff regarding pollution risks associated with storing waste on the site and the company had failed to carry out any environmental risk assessments since it began operating at Vale Park in 2000.

Following the outcome of court proceedings, an Environment Agency spokesperson said:

“Walsh Mushrooms failed to conduct any assessments of the risks their operations posed to the environment. They did not understand or maintain their drainage system and they failed to provide any training for staff on how to recognise or deal with pollution incidents. As a result of these failings, they caused significant damage to the brook. We will always seek to take action against those whose actions results in pollution of our rivers.”

“Many companies in the food processing industry fail to appreciate that food wastes can be highly polluting and cause serious damage to the environment. By following sensible environmental management procedures businesses will be better placed to comply with relevant legislation and reduce the risks damaging our stream and rivers.”

In a case brought by the Environment Agency, specialist minerals company Imerys has been fined £75,000 and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs after discharging a hazardous chemical into inland freshwaters at a site in Cornwall.

A construction firm has pleaded guilty to illegally interfering with the public water supply sippled by United Utilitiea without consent in Liverpool.

Ofwat has launched a new consultation on its draft forward work programme for the financial year 2017/18.

The regulators of the UK Regulators Network (UKRN) have launched a new intitiative to explore how companies can better identify the needs of consumers in vulnerable circumstances across the energy and water sectors.