A PRESTON farming firm has been fined £1,000 for causing major pollution to a waterway.

WC Thornton & Son Ltd were also charged £326.66 costs at Preston Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to allowing pig slurry to pour into a stream leading into Bacchus Brook, at Bilsborrow.

Environmental protection officers inspected the stream on June 3 last year and found the watercourse running black and strongly smelling of pig slurry.

The source of the slurry was traced back to Jack Nook Farm, in Bilsborrow, and to a leaking holding tank beneath a building which housed pigs.

Slurry in the tank had been allowed to build up and escape through a metal plate fitted over a hole in the wall of the farm building. It was entering the stream which ran immediately beneath the building.

The view of the officers was that contamination of the watercourse would have continued for a considerable distance because of its highly polluting nature and the fact that the small watercourse provided only a minimal dilution of the polluting discharge.