manure, causing an outbreak of diarrhoea and stomach cramps in customers. March 1999 – Ranked sixth in the Environment Agency's league table of "worst polluters" in England and Wales during 1998. July 2000 – Ranked second in the Environment Agency's list of worst polluters, with total fines of £71,250 and 14 court appearances in 1999. September 2001 – Fined £21,000 with £7,345 in costs after pleading guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption to consumers in areas of Bedfordshire in August 2000. October 2001 – 200 tons of raw sewage was discharged from a treatment plant in Wickford into the River Crouch, which killed fish and waterfowl along a stretch of the river. In 2002 the company were fined £200,000 at Basildon Crown Court for the incident. The fine was later reduced on appeal. 2002 – Allowed pollution with raw sewage to wipe out most wildlife in Elstow Brook, Bedfordshire. Fined £190,000. July 2002 – Listed again by the Environment Agency in its top ten polluters league. February 2003 – Fined £17,000 for polluting the River Great Ouse in Norfolk with sewage. February 2003 – Fined £18,000 for pumping sewage effluent into the North Sea off Lowestoft. June 2003 – Fined £12,000 with £3,442 costs after contaminating a waterway with raw sewage overflow from a pumping station. July 2003 – Ranked second in the Environment Agency's list of top ten polluters, with total fines of £285,000 for 2002. Barbara Young, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, criticised the polluters for "treat[ing] Britain like a dustbin" and warned that the situation would continue so long as "pathetic" penalties meant that it made economic sense for the worst offenders to carry on polluting. "It seems extraordinary that multi-million-pound businesses are still prepared to risk their reputations with careless and avoidable neglect of environmental responsibility," she said. June 2004 – Fined £18,000 with £1,748 costs after admitting polluting near Wilstead, Bedfordshire. July 2004 – Listed again in the Environment Agency's top ten of polluters. October 2008 – Fined £150,000 for "repeated illegal discharging from sewage works." July 2010 – Fined £27,000 with £28,000 costs at Basildon Crown Court for allowing untreated sewage from one of its pumping stations to leak into the River Crouch at Wickford on 17 August 2009. This was Anglia Water's 90th conviction for polluting waterways. January 2011 – Fined £35,000 fine after discharging untreated sewage into the