Western Australian milk producer, Brownes has been fined $100,000 for polluting a creek near its Brunswick production facility with waste milk.
A ruptured seal in a milk silo caused somewhere between 70,000 litres and 140,000 litres of waste to spill into a Brunswick creek in the nearby Elvira Gully in November 2011, The West reports.
Magistrate Kelvin Fisher heard that the spill caused fish to die, in addition to producing a rotting odour that affected residents that lived nearby.
Brownes was fined in Bunbury Magistrate’s court on one count that it caused, or allowed pollution.
The ruptured seal was found to be caused by a lack of regular maintenance.
It took the company four weeks to clean the spill at the cost of $387,000.