Thames Water fine

I read this article in the Guardian last week - did anyone else see it?

Environment Agency criticises fine after Thames Water poisoned river

Here's an extract...

The first officials knew about one of Britain's worst pollution incidents in recent years was when residents began to report the river Wandle had turned "milky" and dead and distressed fish were everywhere.

Local people tried to rescue the chub, roach, dace and barbel, plunging them into buckets of clean water. But they were too late: one man rescued a large number of eels, but they bled to death through their gills.

Yesterday Thames Water, the company responsible, was fined £125,000 for the incident in south London in September 2007 – a figure that has been criticised by the Environment Agency as "not sufficient" to change company behaviour in future.

The fish died after a large quantity of industrial chlorine had been accidentally released during a clean-up at a sewage plant owned by Britain's biggest water company. It later turned out that the company realised almost immediately, but staff on site did not did not issue a public warning.

Eventually the chlorine spread 3 miles downstream, and the Environment Agency and local volunteers took three days to clear two tonnes of dead fish from the river. The results of two decades of "painstaking" restoration to turn the chalk stream into a popular fishery were "wiped out" in one day, said the agency.

[...more on the link above]