GWENT company Wormtech was fined more than £40,000 yesterday, after polluting a water supply and forcing a Ministry of Defence training base into quarantine for three months.

The pollution was deemed a risk to human health, with soldiers based at the Caerwent site unable to use ditches and streams they would usually jump into as part of training, while a brook two kilometres away was also polluted.

Wormtech Limited, which is based at the adjoining Centurion Business Park, was fined £41,015 by Newport magistrates yesterday, after director Jacqueline Powell pleaded guilty to two charges on the company’s behalf.

These were counts of polluting the Nedern Brook between January 1 and April 6, 2010 and a count of failing to comply with an enforcement notice served on August that year by October 26.

Prosecuting for the Environment Agency, Mohammed Yakub said the company operates on a site owned by the MoD, composting 25,000 tonnes of green and food waste annually. The composting process creates a liquid which must be contained in a holding tank.

Mr Yakub said: “It seeped out, polluting ditches, streams and brooks. The Army had to quarantine an area, leaving personnel unable to train in an area where they would have jumped in ditches and streams.”

He said the west part of the site was closed between March and June 2010 because of “human health risks”.

The MoD called the Environment Agency in and bacteria, including E. Coli, were found. Mr Kakub said 23,100 milligrammes of pollution was found in leachate in a pipe out of Wormtech’s plant: the levels for a healthy stream are between 0 and nine milligrammes.

Mr Yakub called it “severe contamination,” with streams around the MoD area and the Nedern Brook two kilometres away contaminated.

Defence barrister Martin Jones said the enforcement notice has now been complied with, but admitted it hadn’t been by last October.

He said the company had struggled to get planning permission quickly, but has now installed a sealed drainage system; employees keep a site diary, and; culverts are cleared twice daily.

Chairman of the bench Edwin Martin fined the company £10,000 for polluting the Nedern Brook and £25,000 for failing to comply with the order, with £6,000 costs to the Environment Agency and a £15 victim surcharge.

Dangers of liquid waste

A SPOKESMAN for Environment Agency Wales said: “Leachate is harmful to rivers and groundwaters and the wildlife that lives there.

It is vital that it is contained and not allowed to leak off site. We will not hesitate to take action against any operator we find that is not following the rules we set.”

£41,000 fine foor poollutioon