News From OilFiredUp
RSS
Polluter pays the price for Oil Pollution
27th June 2010
Plastic bottle recycling company AWS Eco Plastics has been fined a total of £19,500 and ordered to pay full Environment Agency costs of £8,447 for twice polluting a dyke with oil at Hemswell Cliff, Gainsborough. The dyke was in a protected zone for drinking water abstracted by Anglian Water.
The first time oil went into the water in October 2008 it ended up in the corner of Hemswell Cliff lake and two adult mute swans from a nesting site at Helmswell Cliff died as a result.
AWS Eco Plastics had contacted the Environment Agency to tell them that there had been a spill of about 1,000 litres at its site. A night workman had been filling generators on a roof with diesel from a main tank which was on the ground floor and had forgotten to turn off the pump for more than two hours. The oil was running into surface water drains at Hemswell Cliff and into an interceptor 36 metres upstream of Hemswell Cliff Sewage Treatment Works, the court was told.
Environment Agency officers advised blocking drains on the roof straight away to prevent any further pollution and cleaning of the roof.
On a visit almost two weeks later an Agency officer found that booms and absorbent pads were saturated with oil, although the drain was clear further downstream before the final boom, but the roof had still not been cleaned and contaminated soil at the premises had not been removed. And a full month after the incident there was still a need for more cleaning.
In March 2009 there was another spill estimated to be about 740 litres of diesel when an unknown member of staff left a pump running while filling a fork lift truck. A month later there was still diesel mixed with algae on top of the lake although the water was now much cleaner.
After the first incident a company representative told investigating officers that the arrangement of filling generators on the roof from the main tank on the ground was a temporary arrangement during which time the generator auto-cut off system did not work. He said the company had not had time to carry out a risk assessment.
He said the spill kit was running low as there had been a smaller spill four days before and no records of the spill had been kept because the records system was new.
After the second incident, the former site manager told investigating officers that the member of staff who had left the pump running had not been authorised to fill the fork lift truck. An alarm only activated when the pump was on automatic mode but on this occasion it had been on manual mode. He admitted that the procedures had not been revised since the first spill.
Since then, he said, a new Standard Operating Procedure for diesel pumping had been introduced, a secure padlock had been fitted to the generator room door, an audible and visual alarm had been fitted to the day tank and outlets from the tank plugged. The company planned to switch from diesel to gas.
The court wad told that that in both pollutions there had been significant environmental impact for about 650 metres downstream, adversely affecting the amenity and chemical water quality. 'There was evidence of poor management on site.'
'Both incidents required extensive clean-up measures with the clean-up contractors still visiting the site for more than a month after each incident.'
In mitigation, Jonathan Dunkley said that in August 2009 the site suffered a devastating fire in which temperatures reached 850 degrees centigrade yet no diesel was lost from the mechanical infrastructure. He said that this was testament to the measures the company had taken since the second spill.
After the hearing Environment Agency officer James Finch said, "Unfortunately oil pollution is a common problem, and a lack of infrastructure and poor management are not acceptable. Pollution Prevention should be common practice.
"The second incident was completely foreseeable as procedures had not been adequately improved since the first spill.
"We want to work with businesses to protect the environment from pollution through preventative measures. However, when the environment is damaged; the polluter must pay."
