A firm that admitted discharging 120 million litres of raw sewage into the Firth of Forth has been fined £13,500. Veolia Water Outsourcing, known at the time of the incident as Thames Water Services, made the unauthorised discharge at Seafield Wastewater Treatment Plant in Leith in April 2007.
We reported in the May 2007 Monthly Bulletin that a failure at the Marine Esplanade Pumping Station meant that sewage spilled into the Forth for 64 hours as engineers tried to fix the machinery. The accident caused a foul smell in the Seafield and Leith area of Edinburgh and Scottish Water were inundated with complaints from residents concerned about the water quality. Sheriff Janys Scott insisted the offence did not merit the maximum fine of £40,000 because it had not impacted on the environment and efforts were made to correct the mistake. She did however criticise the company for failing to have a contingency plan for pump failure.
Colin Bayes, Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) director of environmental protection and improvement said, "This was clearly an avoidable accident. Major pumping stations pose a clear threat to the environment in the event of failure, and require preventative maintenance with major back-up facilities. This was not evident in this case and under different circumstances, there was the potential to cause serious environmental damage."
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