Study centre in court over sewage

THE International Studies Centre, which is based at Herstmonceux Castle, was given a six month conditional discharge and ordered to pay 727 costs by Eastbourne Magistrates on Tuesday following a breach of consent relating to disposal of treated sewage.

In a prosecution brought by the Environment Agency, the court heard that in 1994 the Centre was give permission to discharge up to 110 cubic metres of treated sewage effluent a day into an adjoining watercourse.

Strict conditions were imposed following comments from English Nature, as it is only 100 metres from the protected Pevensey Levels.

One condition was that the levels of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Suspended Solids should not exceed 20mg/l and 30mg/l respectively.

On October 9 last year agency officers visited the castle to take routine samples which showed the BOD level to be 290mg/l and the suspended solids level to be 765mg/l. This meant that the BOD level was 14 times the consented figure while the suspended solids level was 25 times the consented figure.

Peter Bilborough from the Environment Agency s legal team advised the court that this was the equivalent concentration to raw domestic sewage and suggested that the treatment plant was failing to reduce the concentration of the discharge from the castle.

A representative from the centre was interviewed in November, 2000, and while he was uncertain of the precise cause of the breach, he attributed it in part to the wet weather. He also pointed out that the plant was designed to handle waste from some 600 people and only 200 were then based there.

It also became apparent from this interview and other investigations that there was no one on site with the technical knowledge needed to operate a complex piece of equipment when it failed.

Mr Bilborough added: 'Whilst there is no evidence of environmental harm from this incident, the proximity of the discharge point to a sensitive area does mean that the potential for such harm exists.

'In this day and age all those who handle or use polluting or potentially polluting matter are expected to take care to ensure that there is no risk that the environment will suffer. Prevention is far better that trying to cure the environmental damage which could occur.

'In this case the centre were responsible for ensuring that their treatment plant worked correctly and unfortunately failed in this task with the consequential serious breach of their consent.

In pleading guilty to the offence the International Studies Centre stated that it had spent more than 40,000 in attempting to rectify the problem over a number of years and that a reed bed had been put in place which would solve the problem. The defendant added that it was a non-profit making charity.