A BREWERS has been fined £9,500 for allowing two of its Bury pubs to pollute nearby brooks.

And Rochdale magistrates also ordered J. W. Lees and Co to pay costs of £650.

The Middleton company admitted three charges of allowing excessive effluent from The Pack Horse at Birtle to run into a tributary of Tack Lee Brook, and three more charges of allowing effluent from The Three Arrows at Pilsworth into a tributary of Brightley Brook.

The court was told on Tuesday that the company had a consent to discharge surface water and treated sewage effluent from the sewage treatment plant serving the Three Arrows and a plant serving the Pack Horse.

Julie Goulbourne, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told the court that an officer found that a routine sample of the effluent discharging from The Three Arrows pub in Pilsworth Road into Brightley Brook was in breach of the conditions imposed in March of last year. The company had been prosecuted in 1998 for breaches of effluent levels at the same pub. Magistrates heard how further samples taken in July, October and December last year were all found to be in breach of the discharge consent limits.

The court was told that, following the sampling last October, the company installed a unit to improve the quality of the discharge to Brightley Brook and was given approximately six weeks to allow it to begin working effectively.

Mrs Goulbourne said samples taken in December were more than double the limit for biochemcial oxygen demand, a measure of oxygen in the water, and almost three times higher than the permitted levels of suspended solids.

Magistrates were told how a similar consent authorises the discharge of treated sewage effluent from the sewage treatment plant serving the Pack Horse.

The company was found to be in breach of the conditions in January, April and July last year.

Mr John Parr, on behalf of the company, said Lees was an established firm and took its environmental responsibilities very seriously, spending thousands of pounds trying to solve the problem.

The £650 costs will go to the Environment Agency which brought the prosecution.

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