Portable toilet firm fined after water pollution incident

A portable toilet firm has been fined after water pollution killed hundreds of fish in a Birmingham river.

The firm has been ordered to pay more than £25,000 after 300 fish were killed by river pollution.

Orchid Investments Ltd admitted dumping polluted waste from its chemical toilets into a tributary to the River Avon at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon.

At the time of the incident - August 2011 - the firm was supplying portable toilets for the Bulldog Bash biker festival.

The ammonia in the toilet waste was toxic to fish and subsequently killed a number of different species. This included roach, minnows, perch and dace.

The firm pleaded guilty to causing a discharge of chemical toilet effluent without first obtaining an environmental permit at Leaminton Magistrates’ Court.

As a result the firm was fined some £16,000 and ordered to pay £9,367 in costs, as well as a £15 victim surcharge, after an investigation by the Environment Agency was carried out.

The court heard the company has entered an early guilty plea and shown remorse over the whole incident.

Sealed plastic holding tanks would usually have been used to contain the substance during the event before been taken to sewage treatment works off site.

However, this incident was caused because the company had wrongly assumed the holding vessel was lined. This meant the effluence was poured straight into the tributary.

As a result the Environment Agency was forced to carry out a substantial operation in order to clear the pollution. This covered more than two miles of the watercourse, and included the opening of the River Avon.

What’s more, officers from the agency also had to monitor the tributary in order to prevent the pollution flooding further down the river.

Kate Grimsditch, officer in charge for the Environment Agency, said after the hearing:  “Rivers and watercourses are an important part of our environment, and we must do our best to protect them from pollution.’’