{"id":694920,"date":"2026-07-16T14:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T14:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694920\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T14:02:09","slug":"southern-water-admits-polluting-four-miles-of-sensitive-river-test-stream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694920\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Water admits polluting four miles of sensitive River Test stream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Salmon born within the River Test chalk stream are genetically unique. They are more vulnerable and less resilient than other salmon and need clean, well oxygenated water, the EA added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Simon Moody, from the EA, said such chalk streams were &#8220;precious, natural resources&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Southern Water&#8217;s safeguards which should have protected this chalk stream failed one by one. That&#8217;s unacceptable,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Chalk streams should be gin clear. Thorough maintenance and tested process would have prevented this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following the court hearing, Southern Water said the incident happened &#8220;during a period of extreme rainfall and resulted in an asset failure&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This should not have occurred and fell below the standards we set for ourselves, and that our customers expect,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We have pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to the pollution that resulted and are cooperating fully with the legal process.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company is due to be sentenced at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Salmon born within the River Test chalk stream are genetically unique. They are more vulnerable and less resilient&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-694920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}