A Truro-based company was today ordered to pay £3,000 in fines and costs after a cocktail of hazardous chemicals leaked from an industrial estate into a tributary of the Penryn River. The case was brought by the Environment Agency.
Members of the public raised the alarm after a stream near the Kernick Industrial Estate turned foamy and started to smell ‘very strongly’ of chemicals. Several people, including dog walkers, reported seeing dead and dying fish and became concerned for the safety of their pets. One eye-witness said foam was discharging from a culvert.
The Agency launched an investigation and took a water sample from the stream on April 25, 2007. On analysis it was found to contain a number of hazardous chemicals including high concentrations of phenolic compounds.
Preliminary inquiries failed to trace the source of the pollution, but further investigations led the Agency to Advanced Oxidation Ltd – a research and development company on the Kernick Industrial Estate.
The site manager confirmed there had been a pollution incident at the site on April 24, 2007 when approximately 800 litres of hazardous liquid wastes had escaped from the premises and entered a surface water drain. The spill was caused by an incorrectly fitted washer in a treatment tank.
Liquid waste was being transferred to the treatment tank from a bulk container when the site manager was distracted by a phone call. On his return he noticed the spill, but failed to report it to anyone until the Agency turned up at the factory a month later.
The pollution affected approximately 2 kms of the stream; killing fish including eels and brown trout, producing large amounts of foam and turning the water a reddish orange colour.
The water sample taken by the Agency was so strong it had to be diluted by 5,000 times before it could be analysed.
The court heard there was a spill kit on site, but it was ‘woefully inadequate’ to cope with the hazardous chemicals at the premises, some of which had the potential to cause severe burns, convulsions, severe lung damage or even death.
The factory was so short of anti-pollution equipment, at one stage, after the spill on April 24, 2007, the site manager asked a colleague to go to a local supermarket to buy some cat litter to act as an absorbent.
‘This spill was entirely foreseeable and preventable and shows how mismanagement of even small-scale operations at an industrial site can have devastating consequences for the environment,’ said Redwynn Sterry for the Environment Agency.
‘No thought was given by the company or the site manager to the risk their activities posed to the environment. Pollution prevention procedures and apparatus on site were completely inadequate. Significant health and safety risks were also present on site and these also hadn’t been addressed,’ said Redwynn Sterry.
The court heard that Advanced Oxidation Ltd was a small company developing new methods of treating hazardous liquid waste using an advanced oxidation process. Liquids treated included pesticides, leachate and sheep scouring waste.
Advanced Oxidation, of The Old Carriage Works, Moresk Road, Truro, was today fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £500 costs after pleading guilty to three offences under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and Water Resources Act 1991 including causing poisonous, noxious or polluting matter to enter controlled waters and disposing of controlled waste in a manner likely to cause pollution.
