United Utilities Group PLC (LSE:UU.) has been slapped with a hefty £800,000 fine in court for excessive and illicit water abstraction during a dry spell, following a probe by the Environment Agency.
The water company, which supplies the north-west of England, was fined for extracting 22 billion litres of water from Lancashire boreholes, an amount sufficient to fill 8,800 Olympic-sized pools.
The penalty, meted out at Warrington Magistrates Court, follows a probe by the Environment Agency, which uncovered that during a particularly dry spell in 2018, the company had overdrawn, causing significant dips in the Fylde Aquifer.
This underground reservoir, crucial for maintaining healthy river streams and a vital source of public water, is predicted to require years for a full recovery.
The findings revealed breaches in five abstraction licences at the Franklaw and Broughton Borehole Complex.
Carol Holt, Environment Agency area director for Lancashire said the group welcomed the sentencing, "which exposes unacceptable practices from United Utilities Water Limited over a prolonged period of time".
"While water companies are allowed to abstract water from the environment, over abstraction, especially during times of prolonged dry weather, has damaging impacts to our environment. Our actions as regulator have led to today’s sentencing and we will continue to strive for a better water sector across the country to protect our precious water supplies now, and for the future."
She added: "We are transforming our approach to regulation, holding the water industry to account and working with water companies such as United Utilities Water Limited to help them improve."
Earlier this month, UU was one of six of the UK's largest water companies hit by a class-action lawsuit over allegations of underreporting sewage discharges into rivers and oceans, potentially leading to significant compensation claims.
The collective case, representing over 20 million householders, alleges that companies including US, Severn Trent Water and Thames Water failed to accurately report sewage spills and pollution incidents to the Environment Agency and Ofwat.