Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar fined £10,000 for caustic waste discharge
An East Lothian brewery firm has been fined £10,000 after admitting discharging caustic waste into a sewer, causing sewage works to overflow and sparking water contamination warnings.
Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar sent 8,000 litres of undiluted caustic solution into the public sewer when a cleaning process went wrong last December. The company was fined at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. The brewery apologised and said it had taken steps to prevent any repeat. Belhaven Brewery had earlier pleaded guilty to breaching sewerage legislation. The concentrated sodium hydroxide entered filtration tanks for incoming sewage at the town's waste water treatment works. It destroyed the biological organisms which treat the sewage and caused the tanks to foam and overflow. Scottish Water had to close down the treatment plant following the incident on 18 December last year while staff worked to cut the flow, reduce spills and clean and replace essential filtration equipment. The water works discharges into the Biel Water, which drains into the Firth of Forth. Sepa classed the discharge as an environmental pollution incident and the following day East Lothian Council placed signs at Belhaven Bay Beach warning of the risk of possible water contamination. Warning about bathing in the sea or any nearby rivers which flowed into the bay were in place until 4 February. The court heard that Belhaven Brewery halted the discharge as soon as it discovered the problem and alerted Scottish Water. Sara Shaw, head of the Crown Office Wildlife and Environmental Crime Unit, said the incident had caused extensive damage to the treatment works and let to "significant public concern" about water contamination. A Belhaven Brewery spokesman said: "We're sorry this happened and have taken responsibility for the overnight mechanical failure which resulted in this leak. "We have invested significantly in our brewery to ensure this does not happen again. "We worked closely with Scottish Water at the time to address the situation and are pleased that the hearing confirmed there was no lasting damage caused to the bay or our wider Dunbar community."