Fine for sewage waste dumping

A lorry driver has been fined £1,352 after he was videoed discharging liquid waste from his tanker vehicle onto the road and nearby drain in a village in Tyne & Wear.

A passing motorist filmed Stanley Hall discharging the black liquid from his vehicle into the highway drain on the B6317 near Crawcrook in July 2017.

Defending himself at Gateshead Magistrates’ Court, Hall accepted that what he’d done was wrong, although insisted he had been placed under pressure to do so by his now former Hartlepool based employers as the tanker had to be taken in for repairs that evening.

Records confirmed the defendant drove his vehicle from Hartlepool to Ryton where approximately 8,000 litres of waste was drawn out from a storage tank and taken to a sewage treatment works.

Hall then made the return journey to extract a further 8,000 litres, but rather than taking it to the sewage works he emptied the contents on to the road.

An Environment Agency (EA) officer later attended the scene and decided no obvious lasting impact was made upon the watercourse.

Rachael Caldwell, EA area environment manager, said: “Discharging any contaminated liquid waste is a serious offence as it could cause an unlimited amount of damage to the environment and if it ends up in the local watercourse it could have an impact on residents and wildlife.”