A WATER company has been fined more than £1m after thousands of cubic metres of sewage was illegally discharged into the River Ouse.

The foul smelling spillage could be seen in the river for about 200 metres and the water quality was affected for up to a kilometre after the incident in August, 2013.

Yorkshire Water admitted three environmental offences relating to its Naburn treatment works in Fulford, York, when it was prosecuted by the Environmental Agency.

And during the sentencing at Leeds Crown Court the company was fined a total of £1.1m and ordered to pay a further £27,073 in costs.

The sewage had overflowed into the river because of a pump failure at the treatment works.

Three pumps were needed to cope with the volume of sewage, and the company was legally required to have at least one backup pump available in case any of the others fail.

But at the time of the incident, when one of the pumps failed, the backup was not operational and had been out of use for five months.

With only two pumps working, sewage flowed into emergency storage tanks, filled them up, and around 6,000 cubic metres of sewage overflowed through an old outfall into the river.

Had the backup pump been operational, the pollution incident would have been avoided.

But despite the incident, the backup pump was found to be out of operation again just over a year later during a site inspection by the EA. It had been taken away for repair, but had not been replaced.

Mike Riby, environment management team leader at the EA, said: “Water companies have a legal duty to ensure that their operations do not pose a threat to the environment.

“In this case, Yorkshire Water failed to have in place appropriate pumping equipment needed to process sewage at its Naburn treatment works.”

In mitigation, the company said that since April 2015 it has been running a distribution centre that supplies spare pumps and parts to enable it to replace and repair broken pumps.

Afterwards a company spokesman apologised for the “unfortunate” incident and said: “Protecting the environment is of crucial importance to us and we invest hundreds of millions of pounds every year to deliver this commitment.

He added: “In response to this incident, we have carried out a full investigation at Naburn waste water treatment works and taken action to prevent a repeat occurrence.”