PRESTON Magistrates have fined a farmer £700 for polluting a brook in Inglewhite.

Andrew Butler, of Lower Barker Farm, Button Street, in Inglewhite, was also ordered to pay £303.79 in costs to the Environment Agency, which brought the prosecution.

The court heard how on January 5 this year sewage fungus was found in Factory Brook, Inglewhite, near Preston, during a regular inspection by the agency's environment protection officer Andrew Brown.

A surface water drain coming from the direction of Lower Barker Farm was found to be a green colour with a strong smell of effluent. The stream bed upstream of where the drain flows into the brook did not contain the fungus.

Prosecuting for the agency, Liz Bowen said Mr Brown told the farmer Andrew Butler that he believed the surface water drain from the farm was causing a serious pollution problem.

Mr Butler confirmed that he had fitted an overflow from the surface water drain into a small effluent chamber in the farmyard after his milking parlour was flooded the previous summer.

Miss Bowen told magistrates that this chamber pumps effluent into a low-rate irrigation system. But on examination the pump inside was found to be out of order and the effluent was overflowing from the chamber into the surface water drain and then into Factory Brook.

The court heard how Mr Butler told the agency officer that the last time he could be sure the pump was working was before Christmas 1999.

Mr Butler was told to drop the level of effluent in the chamber to stop the overflow and he was served with a notice to minimise the risk of pollution on January 24 this year.

The samples taken from the brook were highly polluting, with a biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) sixty-four times that of domestic treated sewage.