United Utilities was fined £200,000 with additional costs of £54,000 agreed at a sentencing hearing in Bolton Crown Court yesterday (5 June) for drinking water offences in 2015.
The company pleaded guilty to supplying “inadequately disinfected water” from the Sweetloves water treatment works in Bolton on two occasions at a court hearing on 30 January 2018.
United Utilities has apologised for the incidents and said it has invested more than £150 million to prevent such events occurring again.
The charges were brought by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI).
Marcus Rink, chief inspector of drinking water, said: “These were serious failures by the company to maintain control of water treatment processes, and which have been duly recognised by the court. The Inspectorate will continue to require the company to meet the drinking water quality standards in place to protect consumers.”
Martin Padley, director of water and scientific services at United Utilities, added: “We are very sorry for the impact this incident had on our customers three years ago. We take our responsibility to supply safe drinking water very seriously.
“We have invested more than £150 million on new technology and processes including a fail-safe system at Sweetloves treatment works to make sure this type of event does not happen again, and customers can have complete confidence in their tap water.”
The charges relate to two events between 31 March and 3 April 2015 and 19 July and 22 July 2015. The Sweetloves water treatment works supplied a total population of just under 80,000 people at the time and there were no cases of ill health linked to the events.
United Utilities was fined £50,000 in respect of charges which related to the first event and £150,000 for the second event.
The DWI, which investigates all drinking water quality events in England and Wales, said the events arose due to the “failures of sample pumps” serving monitoring equipment critical for controlling the treatment process.
It said the time taken to restore the water treatment process at Sweetloves to an acceptable standard following the second incident had an impact on consumers normally supplied by the works.
Almost 18,000 properties were without water for nearly a day on 20 July 2015 and then had to boil all water for drinking or food preparation until the afternoon of 23 July.
United Utilities said it has invested an additional £7.5 million at Sweetloves treatment works since 2015 and has installed an automatic shutdown system.
It is installing the same “fail-safe system” at every other treatment plant across the North West at a cost of £150 million. The firm claimed it will be the only water company in the UK, by the end of the year, to have “this resilient system at every site”
United Utilities made automatic compensation payments, which totalled more than £1.5 million for the incidents.