The importance of preventing diesel leaks has been underlined after an operator was fined £25,500 at Exeter Crown Court and ordered to pay costs of £84,828 after the fuel leaked from tanks on its Barnstaple site into the River Taw estuary.
In October 2024, Taw and Torridge Coaches Ltd admitted three charges relating to the incident and its Managing Director Mark Hunt admitted to two further charges.
The operator was fined £25,500 for one of its charges and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £41,727.99 and remediation costs of £43,100.01. No separate fine was given for the other two charges, and those against Mr Hunt were ordered to lie on file.
In a case brought by the Environment Agency, the court heard that the operator’s site contained an above-ground 30,000-litre diesel tank. It had two metered fuel pumps connected to the tank via pipework in a below-ground conduit.
The meters had not been calibrated since the business took on the site in 2012 and no maintenance contract or records existed for the fuelling facility.
Following reports of diesel in the Taw estuary, during 2019 the oil was traced to a tributary called the Coney Gut diversion channel, and from there back to the site. Diesel was floating on the surface of groundwater within old recovery sumps and wells, and a conduit was full of oily sludge.
The sludge in the conduit was cleaned out, and upon a subsequent inspection it was found that a screw had been placed in a hole in the pipe in a bid to seal it.
Mr Hunt had denied that the oil came from the site. He stated that the hole in the pipe in which the screw was inserted had occurred during the digging out of the oily sludge and had not existed previously when the oil was first seen in the Taw.
Photographic records showed that was not the case, and that the screw had been present at the time of the first investigations. Mr Hunt had the tank and pipework pressure tested and presented the results as proof that the system was not leaking.
However, it was shown that he had sealed around the screw-filled hole with resin prior to the testing. The pipework was subsequently replaced. On the pipe’s removal, it was found to be “peppered” with more small holes, according to the Environment Agency.
Oil continued to leak into the Coney Gut. Mr Hunt was informed that he needed to get specialist assistance to deal with the contaminated ground, which was the source of the oil. He resisted doing so, arguing that the oil was not from the business’s site.
An Anti-Pollution Works Notice was served on the defendants, requiring them to carry out remediation works recommended by a clean-up company.
The company employed contractors to set up a groundwater remediation system that recovered thousands of litres of diesel. However, when the insurance money ran out, use of the contractors did not continue.
Subsequently, it was found in April 2021 that there was still a possibility of diesel leaking from the ground surrounding the coach depot.
When Mr Hunt was asked why he had not had the fuel pump meters calibrated to ensure he knew exactly how much oil was being taken out of the tank, he replied that he did not need to because he was not selling it.
In sentencing the company, Judge HHJ Adkin said an expert’s report suggested that over 1,000 litres of diesel had escaped over time, and that there had not been adequate work to remediate the contamination. The judge noted that the business was “rich” with a large profit margin, and that the fine must hit home.
