Water firm paying out for pollution

UNITED Utilities has given £155,000 to charity after causing pollution in Tameside and the High Peak.

The company donated cash to three environmental charities after admitting responsibility for sewage blockages which polluted waterways in summer 2016.

The Environment Agency (EA) said the payments are part of two ‘enforcement undertakings’, which mean polluters can escape further action in exchange for offering to pay for, or carry out, environmental improvements.

The six-figure sum was split between the Wild Trout Trust, the Ramblers Association and the Healthy Rivers Trust.

United Utilities also spent a further £10,000 removing rubbish from Swineshaw Brook, near Stalybridge, and paid the EA’s incident response and investigation costs in full.

An EA spokesman said in July 2016, a blockage in a sewage detention tank in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, caused sewage to overflow to the River Goyt, resulting in discolouration to the river downstream to New Mills, and sewage fungus being deposited on the river bed for at least a kilometre.

Then the following month, in August 2016, a blockage in a sewer in Millbrook, Tameside, caused an overflow through a dislodged hatch cover, resulting in a similar impact on a shorter stretch of Swineshaw Brook which runs to the River Tame.