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A Somerset farmer who’s the director of Cross Keys Farms Ltd has been ordered to pay greater than £25,000 for polluting the River Frome.
The corporate pleaded responsible to inflicting an unpermitted discharge of slurry in August 2020, at a case heard in North Somerset Magistrates Courtroom on 28 June 2022.
This polluted the Frome river, turning it brown and smelly, and killed greater than 120 fish, together with many massive pike, roach and chub.
Farmer Michael Aylesbury, director of the corporate, was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay prices of over £13,600.
In 2017, he was discovered responsible of polluting this identical stretch of the River Frome in 2016, killing greater than 1,700 fish.
Members of the general public alerted the Setting Company to the air pollution in August 2020. Residents finishing up ‘citizen science’ river monitoring offered proof.
The air pollution got here from slurry that had been washed out of a dirty cattle trailer and rinsed out on to a concrete yard at Bollow Farm, Silver Lane, East Woodlands.
A pile of slurry left open to the weather was washed into the floor water drain, ending up within the river.
Officers discovered the ditch and river smelt strongly of slurry and low in dissolved oxygen. Investigations additionally confirmed that the slurry air pollution resulted within the loss of life of most invertebrates over greater than 2.6 kilometres downstream.
Andy Grant, Setting Officer, mentioned: “It was very disappointing to search out one other air pollution from Bellow Farm following a earlier prosecution for a significant incident. The river was simply starting to get better and the fish inhabitants was exhibiting indicators of enhancing.
“Informing us of the slurry spillage and keeping track of close by watercourses are two easy actions the farmer ought to have taken to guard the native setting.
“We restocked the river following the 2016 incident and it’s so disappointing to see that work undone.”
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