Builder pays £201,500 to charities after silting watercourses
The Environment Agency has secured a six-figure sum for environmental causes from a national house builder after silt was jetted into watercourses.
Silt blasted out the drains of a housing development in Yate polluted the nearby watercourse.
BDW Trading, part of the Barratt Redrow group, polluted the Ladden Brook and Tanhouse stream in Yate over six days in July 2022.
The silt came from its Ladden Garden Village development after a contractor jet washed silt while cleaning and surveying land drainage. The silt entered the Ladden Brook and Tanhouse stream, prompting an Environment Agency investigation.
BDW Trading acknowledged it bore the responsibility and spent over £180,000 on remediation, staff training and better practices on managing surface water.
The Tanhouse stream after silt entered the watercourse
James Edees of the Environment Agency said:
An incident like this would have never happened with proper procedure in place.
But BDW Trading’s response to cleaning up the mess and investment in preventing it from happening again means we can accept an enforcement undertaking on this occasion.
This means environmental causes will get money to continue their good work and we can draw a line under this issue.
Projects benefiting from the enforcement undertaking include:
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£165,000 to the Bristol and Avon Rivers Trust for the River Chew catchment fish recovery project, a community engagement project and eDNA fish monitoring.
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£11,500 to the Tortworth Forest Centre in Gloucestershire for a woodland wellbeing programme and tree planting.
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£25,000 to the Avon Wildlife Trust for the costs of a community ecologist.
BDW Trading also paid the Environment Agency’s costs and acquired a permit to ensure water discharges are properly regulated.
Background
What is an enforcement undertaking (EU)?
- An EU is available to the Environment Agency as an alternative sanction to prosecution or monetary penalty for dealing with certain environmental offences.
- It is a legally-binding voluntary agreement proposed by a business (or an individual) when the EA has reasonable grounds to suspect that an environmental offence has occurred.
- EUs for environmental offences were introduced under the Environmental Civil Sanctions (England) Order 2010 and the Environmental Civil Sanctions (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2010.