Southern Water fined for Cooden Beach sewage leak

Sunday's report both angered and perplexed local residents who had thought that Cooden's bathing and sea-sport areas were clean.

But at Hastings Magistrates' Court last Friday Southern Water had pleaded guilty when the Environment Agency prosecuted the company over a pumping station failure.

The failure caused sewage to flow down Cooden Beach at a peak holiday time last year.

Southern Water admitted the offence and was fined 8,000 and ordered to pay costs of 1,200.

Southern Water owns and operates the Cooden Sea Road sewage pumping station.

This has a consent to discharge into the sea in the event of a storm to deal with the problem of excessive flows. This discharge is only allowed during adverse weather conditions as nobody would be using the beach at that time.

The court heard that on July 19, 2007, Environment Agency officers were called to an incident at the pumping station and on arrival saw a sizeable discharge of sewage from the site which was flowing down the beach into the sea.

There were people using the beach and a family playing alongside the flow and they were advised by the Environment Agency officers to immediately move away from the sewage discharge.

The weather just before the incident occurred was dry and therefore not due to any storm conditions at the time.

Samples taken of the discharge showed that it was half the strength of raw sewage. Investigations by Southern Water identified the cause of the discharge being due to two pumps failing at the pumping station.

Bob Jennings of the Environment Agency said: "Southern Water were well aware of the risks posed by any escape of sewage from the pumping station which is situated so close to the sea. Despite that the pumps failed to work correctly and as a result there was a significant and preventable incident that occurred on this popular beach."

In mitigation, Southern Water entered an early guilty plea, co-operated fully with the Environment Agency and spent 48,000 improving systems at the pumping station so that the incident should not happen again.

Southern Water admitted that the pumps failed but said it was not a case where corners were cut or systems where being downgraded. The company apologised for the unpleasant incident but said it was at the lower end of the scale.

The Magistrates said that this incident happened at a holiday time for families and there were many people on the beach.

The environmental impact could have been worse and there were no proper backup systems in place at the time.