No prosecution over Silchester brook incident
Investigations by the Environment Agency (EA) have been ongoing since agency officials were called to the scene at 6pm on August 25 last year (2013) at Silchester and Foudry brooks where an estimated 750 fish died, with a foul stench emitted from the water.
The EA issued a statement last Thursday (Sept 18) confirming EA investigations were complete and that it was not planning to take any enforcement action but was working with Thames Water on the issue:
“We have completed our investigation into a pollution incident in the Silchester Brook in August 2013.
"All of our sample results confirmed that the fish kill was solely due to very low oxygen levels along the affected stretch of the brook, likely to be caused by a high level of organic matter in the water and not due to any chemical toxins.
"However, we did not find any one identifiable individual cause of the low oxygen levels and so we will not be taking any enforcement action.
"As a result of our investigation we are working with Thames Water to ensure that discharges from their sites in the area adjust their output according to flow conditions.
"Thames Water has funded the installation of water quality probes to see how water changes at different flows, and we will continue to work with them on an improvement plan to minimize the risk of pollution incidents in the future.”
At the time of the incident, the EA estimated some 750 fish were killed.
EA officials took water samples on the affected stretch of water and following the incident last year (2013), the EA issued the following statement:
“Our monitoring on the Foudry Brook in Hampshire has showed that water quality readings between Reading and Tadley were normal and showed no ongoing pollution in the watercourse.”
Silchester villager, Linda Alexander, of Clappers Farm in the village, said at the time of the incident that life had just begun to return to the water, including kingfishers, herons, ducks and moorhens, three years after another pollution incident in the brook.
