A COMPOSTING company has been ordered to pay out £11,848 after admitting responsibility for causing "significant" pollution to Moors River.

Bosses at Parley company Eco Sustainable Solutions appeared at Bournemouth Magistrates' Court in September to plead guilty to one charge of causing or knowingly permitting a water discharge contrary to the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010.

And the company has now been sentenced for the offence, discovered in December 2013 when a report of pollution flowing into the river at East Parley was made to the Environment Agency.

It's the second time Eco Sustainable Solutions has contravened environmental law in less than two years.

At the time of the newest offence, the company - owned by Trelawney Dampney - was composting green waste and food waste in two separate operations.

The food waste was composted in sealed vessels, which, as it broke down, produced a highly polluting liquid called leachate.

Environmental permits state that any leachate produced during composting operations must be directed to a foul sewer for treatment.

However, following alerts of pollution, an investigating officer from the Environment Agency discovered a ditch full of a foul-smelling black liquid flowing into the Moors River.

Aquatic plants in the river downstream of the ditch were also found to be covered in a sewage fungus for more than two miles.

The river is classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The leak of effluence occurred after a domestic waste pipe, not designed to carry pollutants such as leachate, ruptured.

It was classed as a “category one incident”, the agency’s “most serious and damaging” categorisation.

Later tests showed oxygen levels in the ditch and river downstream of the pollution to be severely depleted and ammonia levels to be far higher than normal.

This would have eventually wiped out aquatic life in the ditch and reduced water quality in the river to a dangerous level.

Magistrates in Bournemouth have now fined the company £7,500 and ordered it to pay costs of £4,348.

The company will also pay a £120 victim surcharge.

Mr Dampney, who was in 2014 crowned 'entrepreneur of the year' at the Dorset Business Awards, said the incident was a "genuine accident" caused by a third party contractor hitting a pipe which was taking waste from the site.