A farm manager has appeared in court and slapped with a fine for his ‘reckless attitude’, which led to polluting an East Devon river with a thick blanket of sewage fungus.
A Devon farm partnership has been fined almost £16,000 after slurry discharges from two different sites polluted the River Yarty last May, writes Isabelle Pinnock, OPCC court reporting scheme.
The partnership, known as DI and R Dyer, of Crawley Farm, Yarcombe, pleaded guilty to two offences of causing water pollution discharges into inland freshwaters, at Street Ash Farm, near Chard, and at Crawley Farm.
Pictured here is slurry running across the yard.
Photo: The Environment Agency.
Exeter Magistrates’ Court heard that organic manure runoff entered the River Yarty, a 16-mile East Devon river that rises in the Blackdown Hills of Honiton.
The case was brought by Devon County Council’s Environmental Health team, after a member of the local community photographed slurry runoff on the farmland.
The court heard that over a three-week period, slurry had been spread onto five fields, which were saturated due to the weather conditions. As a result, the slurry runoff entered the nearby river Yarty.
Th EA said a member of the public reported the spreading of slurry and manure on bare soil in five fields at land rented in Street Ash, Somerset.
Manure was spread over saturated fields.
Photo: The Environment Agency.
When Environment Agency officers attended the site, they found the fields were saturated with water. That water was running off the field into a ditch and into a tributary of the River Yarty.
There was slurry being pumped and discharged from a pipe onto a field rather than into a slurry store.
Silage effluent was also running out of silage clamps and being allowed to enter the tributary.
The tributary of the River Yarty was covered in a thick blanket of sewage fungus.
And it was found to have had a ‘detrimental impact’ on aquatic invertebrates in a tributary of the River Yarty.
Slurry fungus was found in the grass.
Photo: The Environment Agency.
The judge noted that the defendants have still not yet built the slurry store for which permission was granted in January 2025.
Speaking after the verdict, an Environment Agency spokesperson said: “This farm’s reckless attitude to the storage and spreading of manure and slurry led to two pollution incidents and the risk of far greater harm.
“Derek Dyer has failed to learn his lesson despite multiple prosecutions and warnings over almost two decades.
“This outcome demonstrates that we will not hesitate to prosecute repeat polluters who fail to listen to Environment Agency advice and warnings.
Environmental testing revealed high ammonia levels in the watercourse, which was described as brown in colour, smelling strongly of slurry, and covered in white foam.
Pictured here is the first pollution incident, where run-off was discovered 350-metres downstream.
Photo: The Environment Agency.
The court heard slurry was also discharged from a pipe onto land from which it flowed into waterways.
High ammonia levels are toxic to aquatic life and can result in fish deaths. Testing of the water course showed there had been a decline in aquatic populations.
The prosecution said there were “real concerns” about whether offending would change and said the farm owners had shown hostility to the Environmental Health inspectors during investigation.
The court also heard that the farm had been warned again about pollution risks as recently as March this year.
When Environment Agency officers investigated, they found a pipe with slurry running down a field.
Photo: The Environment Agency.
Additional charges were brought against Derek Dyer, 76, of the partnership, who pleaded guilty to two offences as a land manager.
The charges related to failing to ensure that applications of organic manure were properly planned to avoid significant risk of pollution, including failing to account for weather conditions.
District Judge Smith said Dyer failed to plan properly and adopt reasonable precautions and had stored excess manure in a location that was prohibited.
Inspectors had previously visited the farm in November 2023 and advised that manure should not be stored close to a watercourse, but later images showed it remained in the same location.
The court heard that the offences were committed while Dyer was subject to a community order.
David Sapiecha, defending, said the partnership apologises for the offences and are seeking to work with the environmental agency.
He said the root cause of the incidents was insufficient slurry storage capacity, and plans were in place to construct additional storage which would “solve the issue”.
District Judge Smith noted that planning permission to build a new slurry lagoon had been obtained some 14 months before the offences.
The judge said: “Why the hesitation to spend £28,000 on a slurry tank last year? The funds are available.”
The court heard that over the last three years, the partnership had a turnover of £1.83 million.
Dyer told the court that “awful weather” and “two wet winters” had delayed construction.
Sapiecha said that in May last year there had been a yellow weather warning issued, anddescribed the offences as an “oversight”.
“The difficulty with the initial pollution is that it can occur suddenly,” he said. “The problem was that the fields had only just been rented, and it takes farmers a while to understand the land they are working with. I would ask you to consider that these fields had not been properly assessed, and the others had been.”
Sentencing, the judge described the offences as “wilful blindness”, noting that Derek Dyer had previous convictions for 16 similar offences dating back to 2009.
“The regulatory framework exists to protect public health. As a farmer you are entrusted with significant responsibility,” the judge said. “I don’t want to see you in this court again.”
The partnership was fined £3,300 for each offence, ordered to pay a £2,000 surcharge and £7,368 in costs, bringing the total to £15,968.
Derek Dyer was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay a £1,000 surcharge, totalling £3,500.
The farm has a history of contact with the Environment Agency (EA) and has been issued advice and warnings on a number of occasions.
The EA said Derek Dyer was previously given a community order in 2024 after contaminating a private water supply and polluting a stream when the slurry store he built from farmyard manure collapsed.
And when further offending took place, it resulted in a conviction in 2009.
- Additional reporting by Becca Gliddon.
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