A water company could be sentenced today for polluting a river after being prosecuted privately by an angler.
Roy Hart, 53, sued Anglian Water last October after being horrified by the amount of sewage in the River Crouch near his home in Battlesbridge, Essex.
The effluent, which was accidentally discharged from a sewage works upstream, turned the river brown and killed dozens of fish.
The Environment Agency, whose role it is to monitor such discharges, was undecided whether to prosecute over what was believed to be the worst case of pollution on the Crouch for a generation. So Mr Hart, who has no legal training, took out a private prosecution and succeeded at a hearing before magistrates in Basildon in February.
The case has been transferred to a Crown Court judge and sentence could be passed today.
Anglian Water admitted causing pollution. It said the flow was not spotted because a monitoring device was being repaired.
