A Cornish farmer has been ordered to pay £3,765 after a digestate spill at a farm near Warbstow caused a major fish kill in the River Ottery. According to the government account of the case, Truro magistrates’ court heard that Norman Osborne, 57, of Tobarn, Jacobstow, operated the site where the pollution incident took place in May 2022. Following a hearing on 13 May, Osborne was fined £215 after pleading guilty to causing a water discharge activity. The court also ordered him to pay the Environment Agency’s costs of £3,550, taking the total financial penalty to £3,765.
The prosecution was brought under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016. The charge related to one offence of causing a water discharge activity on 20 May 2022, contrary to regulation 38(1)(a) and regulation 12(1)(b). In regulatory terms, the case is a straightforward but important example of the Environmental Permitting regime being used to address pollution entering a watercourse. For readers outside the environmental compliance field, a water discharge activity is not limited to deliberate disposal. The offence can arise where polluting matter enters controlled waters without lawful authority. In practice, that places a clear duty on operators to manage storage, transfer and containment systems properly, particularly where slurry, digestate or other high-risk substances are being moved on site.
The Environment Agency said its officers responded to reports of dead fish in the River Ottery on 22 May 2022. Their investigation found that an estimated 2,300 gallons of digestate had entered the watercourse from a tank on Osborne’s farm. Digestate is a wet, slurry-like material produced through the anaerobic digestion of food waste and other organic matter, and it is often used as a fertiliser. The substance can carry very high ammonia and nitrogen levels. That makes any uncontrolled release into rivers or streams a serious pollution event, with a strong likelihood of oxygen depletion and acute harm to aquatic life.
The court was told that Osborne had been transferring digestate from a tank into a tanker for spreading on farmland when a connecting hose broke. The spilled digestate then ran down the road and entered a nearby watercourse. The case was made more serious by evidence that the material was washed into the watercourse after the spill. The Environment Agency also told the court that the incident was not reported by Osborne. That point matters in enforcement terms because prompt reporting can allow regulators to advise on containment, mitigation and emergency action. Where reporting is delayed or omitted, the opportunity to reduce downstream harm may be lost.
The environmental effects were substantial. Some 3.5km of watercourse was affected by the pollution, and the water was found to contain sludge and microplastics. Officers counted 471 dead fish, while the true number was estimated at 1,610. The dead fish included Atlantic salmon, brown trout and bullheads. The government summary of the case also stated that, two years after the incident, fish populations had still not recovered to historic levels. That detail is significant because it shows that the impact of a single discharge can extend well beyond the initial incident response and continue to affect ecological condition over multiple seasons.
In its statement after the case, the Environment Agency said the pollution caused a major fish kill and lasting damage to the watercourse, and that the failure to report the spill quickly had worsened the outcome. The regulator also restated a basic compliance point for farm operators: digestate is highly polluting and must be handled with particular care. For land managers, contractors and advisers, the case is a practical warning about three linked duties. Transfer equipment must be maintained and monitored during use; any escape of polluting material must be contained immediately; and the regulator must be informed without delay if controlled waters may have been affected. The financial penalty in this case was relatively modest, but the ecological damage described by the Environment Agency was not. The enforcement message is that operational failures, poor incident handling and non-reporting can combine into a much more serious breach under the permitting rules.