South West Water fined almost £8m for sewage spills

South West Water has been fined £7,867,733 after pleading guilty to a series of pollution-related offences committed between 2015 and 2021. The company entered guilty pleas at Plymouth Magistrates' Court following an Environment Agency investigation into incidents at Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place and Polperro in Cornwall, as well as Plymouth in Devon. Of the 18 charges brought, 17 concerned unlawful discharge activities, including sewage releases, while the remaining charge related to a failure to implement required remedial measures after a fault at a sewage pumping station. In a statement issued after sentencing, the water institution said: "We apologise for what happened successful the past." It characterised the case as dealing with "historic matters betwee n 2015 and 2021" and noted that the majority of spills resulted from "the usage of overflows in tempest conditions". The company added: "We're investing £760m to tackle tempest overflows and person reduced spills by 17% successful the past twelvemonth alone, with spill duration down by 25%," the institution said. It also said that "significant improvements" had been made at the sites where contamination occurred. Looking ahead, the institution declared: "We stay focused connected the aboriginal arsenic we present grounds levels of concern to execute cleaner rivers and seas crossed the South West by 2040, a decennary up of nationalist targets," it said.