United Utilities has been fined £800,000 after illegally abstracting 22bn litres of water in Lancashire, causing damage to an important aquifer that will take years to recover.
The illegal removal of water from the Fylde aquifer, which happened during a period of dry weather in 2018, is likely to have negatively affected river flows.
An aquifer is rock or sediment that holds groundwater – rain that is held below the surface of the soil and collected in empty spaces underground. Aquifers feed rivers to keep their flows at a healthy level, and are also important sources of water when reservoirs or other sources run low.
There are strict limits on the amount of water that companies can take from aquifers, as rivers can be damaged and an important emergency water source for local people is lost if they are drained. Campaigners have previously said water companies should be fixing leaks in the system and building reservoirs rather than over-abstracting water from the environment.
United Utilities was prosecuted at Warrington magistrates court and was given the fine on Tuesday after the Environment Agency found the company had taken more water than its abstraction licences allowed in the Franklaw and Broughton borehole complex.
Carol Holt, the Environment Agency area director for Lancashire, said: “While water companies are allowed to abstract water from the environment, over-abstraction, especially during times of prolonged dry weather, has damaging impacts to our environment.
“Our actions as regulator have led to today’s sentencing and we will continue to strive for a better water sector across the country to protect our precious water supplies now, and for the future. We are transforming our approach to regulation, holding the water industry to account and working with water companies such as United Utilities Water Ltd to help them improve.”
The water company said during the hearing that it had made internal improvements so that over-abstraction would not happen again, and committed to supporting a number of local Rivers Trust schemes. It has made a voluntary £3m contribution to environment initiatives.
Grant Batty, the water services director at United Utilities, said: “We apologised for the breach in water abstraction that happened five years ago in 2018. We did not exceed the amount of water we could abstract on a daily and yearly basis, but we did inadvertently breach a three-year rolling limit on the abstraction licence. As soon as we discovered this, we established additional controls to ensure it never happens again. We took action straight away, pleaded guilty and also made a £3m voluntary contribution to local environmental improvement projects.”