SOUTHERN Water has been fined £5,000 with £360 costs for polluting a wood near Uckfield with sewage.

Magistrates at Lewes imposed the fine after hearing it was the water giant's 34th pollution offence committed in the past eight and a half years.

Southern Water admitted discharging the sewage into a ditch adjoining Coopers Green waste water pumping station, in a case brought by the Environment Agency under the Water Resources Act.

Peter Bilbrough, for the Agency, said that in December 1997 an officer visited the site after a complaint from a local resident about strong smells in the vicinity.

He said a large area of woodland was saturated with sewage effluent and there were signs of pollution down to a tributary of the River Uck, although the River Uck was uneffected by the discharge.

He said: "There were pools of sewage effluent and some evidence of sewage debris lying around."

Mr Bilbrough told the court that one of the two pumps at the station had been removed for repair, leaving just one pump operating with no backup.

The remaining pump had failed and the alarm had not functioned at the monitoring station at Falmer.

Mr Bilbrough added: "The Agency feels that Southern Water failed to run the works and to ensure there were sufficient pumps on site and the alarm systems, intended to stop such an incident, were working correctly."

Fiona Chantrey, for the company, said one of the reasons the pump failed was due to chicken pieces and fat entering it from the nearby Mayhew Poultry Farm, at Five Ash Down.

She said: "It was an unprecedented situation caused by an unfortunate sequence of coincidences."

Southern Water said it regretted the pollution incident and had implemented a number of modifications to the pumping station.

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