Weetabix fined £140,000 for diesel spill into river

Breakfast cereal manufacturer Weetabix were fined nearly £140,000 after a leak of diesel fuel entered the River Ise which ran near the company's Burton Latimer site.
The circumstances were:

• There is a disused fuel storage facility onsite which was decommissioned approximately 20 years ago. 
• In 2007 the Environment Agency sent Weetabix notices advising them to remove the pipework from the decommissioned tanks.
• Weetabix did not do this. 
• Weetabix should have had records of the valves and underground pipes in the former storage facility.
• However, the company’s risk assessment did not contain information about secondary valves.
• When these secondary valves in the overground fuel tanks were left open on 10 November 2016, approximately 23,000 litres of diesel road fuel fuel drained through these pipes into the river.
• Wet weather combined with the way the river was flowing at the time limited the amount of damage to fish and plant life.