Companies are made to pay for pollution in rivers

COMPANIES WHOSE activities polluted rivers and streams or caused other environmental damage have agreed to pay more than £2.2m to green charities and local projects.

The largest contribution comes from Wessex Water, who will hand over £975,000 as redress for sewage spills at Swanage in Dorset, which caused more than 142,000 cubic metres of waste to be illegally discharged into the sea during 2016 and 2017, the Environment Agency said.

The payment is the highest in UK history and will see £400,000 going to a council flood defence scheme in the town and £400,000 to the Dorset Waste Partnership to fund a doorstep recycling service for domestic fat, oil and grease.

Locally, Tesco will give £100,000 to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust for polluting a watercourse and ponds with diesel, and Yorkshire Water Services will pay £200,000 to the same trust for polluting a river.

Carlsberg UK will pay a combined £120,000 to two organisations for polluting the River Nene in Northampton, where the company has a brewery and bottling plant.

“We take these environmental incidents very seriously and these payments of more than £2.2m direct to charities will help them carry out vital projects to improve our environment right across England,” the Environment Agency’s legal services director Peter Kellett said.

A total of 15 charities and projects will benefit from the enforcement undertakings offered by the companies nationally.

The Wildlife Trusts’ senior policy manager Ellie Brody said she hoped the payments reminded businesses of their responsibility to maintain a clean environment.

“Obviously we would have been happier if these incidents hadn’t occurred at all. However it’s a good principle that polluters should offer redress for the damage they cause,” she said.