A DRAINAGE company was fined £15,000 after pleading guilty to polluting a tributary of Admergill Water in Blacko.

Lanes for Drains Limited, based in Leeds, were also ordered to pay £1,285.60 in costs to the Environment Agency which brought the prosecution yesterday.

Jane Morgan, prosecuting for the Agency, told Burnley Magistrates Court that on May 31, 2002, the Agency a member of the public complained to them about raw sewage getting into a stream from a septic tank serving the Moorcock Inn, Blacko.

An Environment Agency officer visited and saw that a pipe was bypassing the tank's treatment chambers and discharging untreated sewage into the stream, a tributary of Admergill Water.

The landlord contacted his employers who told the Agency the septic tank was being refurbished by a company called Lanes For Drains.

A representative of Daniel Thwaites Plc, which owns the pub, agreed to tell Lanes For Drains to remove the bypass pipe and take away incoming sewage using tankers instead over the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend and until the refurbishment was finished.

The Agency returned to the Moorcock Inn a few days later to check the pipe had been removed but it was still there and although it was no longer diverting sewage away from the treatment chambers, the final chamber was discharging sewage into the stream from an overflow pipe.

Lanes For Drains' regional manager Ronnie McMillan told the Agency the bypass pipe had only been installed temporarily while a full tanker had been taking the sewage to a waste water treatment works for disposal. He also said the pipe had been intended to discharge sewage not straight into the stream but into another part of the septic tanks, where it would be filtered before being discharged.

However, the Agency found the pipe had been cemented in as a permanent structure. Instead of discharging sewage into the filtration tank the sewage was being pumped into the final chamber where it remained untreated and built up until it overflowed.

Samples of the discharge taken by the Agency revealed it was polluting. Sewage of this kind can deplete the oxygen levels in the water, which can be harmful to water plants as well as fish and other creatures.