Penalty for company guilty of pollution.

A SEAFOOD company has been handed a pounds 26,000 penalty by magistrates after admitting 11 offences of polluting sewers and drains around its pounds 10m North East plant.

Cumbrian Seafoods - which is the biggest employer in Seaham, County Durham - was prosecuted by Northumbrian Water for breaching limits imposed on the discharge of trade effluent.

Consett magistrates were told that oily material in the effluent had a serious impact when it reached the Seaham sewage treatment works, threatening the treatment process and requiring an extensive clean-up operation.

Cumbrian Seafoods, of Admiralty Way on the town's Fox Cover industrial estate, admitted three charges and asked for another eight offences to be taken into consideration. It admitted discharging trade effluent into the sewerage network above the consent limit set by Northumbrian Water, and also allowing effluent to escape into the surface water drains, between October 2008 and March this year. Magistrates fined the company the maximum pounds 5,000 on one charge and pounds 2,500 each for the other two charges. It was also ordered to pay costs totalling pounds 16,222 for the subsequent investigation and clean-up.

Cumbrian Seafoods told the court that the problem arose after it moved its operations from Maryport in Cumbria to Seaham in 2007. The battering process at the plant was a contributing factor when its own pre-treatment waste facility failed to operate effectively. Cumbrian Seafoods has a pounds 100m turnover and employs 550 people at its various sites in the North East and Cumbria..