Welsh Water fined £1.35m for more than 800 sewage breaches
Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water has been fined £1.35m after it plead guilty to more than 800 breaches of its environmental permits to discharge sewage.
These were across 300 sites across Wales and Herefordshire.
The charges relate to the self monitoring data from the water company which it submitted to Natural Resources Wales (NRW) as part of its 2020 and 2021 annual reports.
Since 2010 there has been a requirement on water companies to carry out self-monitoring of their effluent discharges from their sewage works and water treatment works.
Dŵr Cymru says an internal restructure of the sampling team and IT-related scheduling issues along with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were the main factors in the deterioration.
Due to the amount of non-compliances recorded, the charges were summarised into 18 offences by Dŵr Cymru.
On the 16th October 2024 at Llandudno Magistrates Court, Dŵr Cymru plead guilty to 15 out of the 18 charges. By the 17th December 2024 the company accepted the remainder of the Taken into Consideration (TIC) charges.
Upon receiving its 2020 annual report, officers for NRW say they were alarmed to find that the quality of the information provided 'had noticeably deteriorated compared to previous years', with over 600 breaches recorded.
However, even though the situation has said to have significantly improved by the submission of the 2021 annual report, a number of non-compliances were identified.
Due to the missing samples and data from the 2020 reporting year, it meant NRW was unable to fully assess or respond to any environmental impacts.
In response a Welsh Water spokesperson said:'Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water has a strong record of compliance with our monitoring obligations prior to and after the period relevant to this matter.
'A combination of factors impacted our work during 2020-21 that included the COVID 19 pandemic. Despite this we met our monitoring requirements, which involve more than 18,000 tests per year, 98.95% of the time in 2020 and 99.45% in 2021.
'No sites were left unmonitored during this time, but the unique circumstances during 2020/21 caused significant challenges and disruption to our operations.
'There has been no identified environmental harm associated with this case and the monitoring failures represent a very small number of examples in a programme involving tens of thousands of submissions each year. Nonetheless, we recognise that our compliance fell short during 2020/21 and we entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity.
'Welsh Water will continue to work closely with our regulators to ensure that we deliver on our two main priorities, the best possible service to our customers and protecting the environment.'
Siân Williams, Head of Operations from Natural Resources Wales said: 'This case highlights inadequacies in the processes at Dŵr Cymru which led to widespread permit breaches across Wales and over the border during a period of two years.
'While we appreciate the disruption all businesses faced during 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic, we believe the failings shown by Dŵr Cymru were avoidable should better contingency planning have been in place.
'Dŵr Cymru's performance has continued to decline for a number of years now, and this is a stark warning to the company that we will not hesitate to use our enforcement powers to secure the improvements we expect to see.'
NRW has downgraded Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water from a four-star (industry leading) company in 2020 to two-star (requires improvement) company in 2022 and 2023 as part of its annual Environmental Performance Assessment.
In 2023, Dŵr Cymru recorded it's worst performance against environmental performance metrics, with a spike in significant pollution incidents and a decrease in incident self-reporting.
Ms Williams added: 'The court's decision is the culmination of this complex investigation into the company's performance across Wales and Herefordshire. I'd like to pay tribute to the diligence and commitment of our regulatory teams in securing permit compliance and enforcing the systemic changes needed within the company.
'We will not hesitate to use our regulatory and enforcement powers where it is the appropriate thing to do to bring any permit holder into compliance.
'In line with our ongoing focus on water quality in Wales, we are investing more resources in frontline compliance monitoring and have increased our auditing of Dŵr Cymru's self-monitoring activities.'
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