In the courts
Waste offences
Donald Ward Limited of Ilkeston was fined £35,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £2,145.00 for breach of a waste management licence.
Environment Agency officers visited the Donald Ward site at Griffon Road, Ilkeston for a routine inspection. The company hold two waste management licences allowing them to store and treat waste and scrap metal. The officers found that metal turnings or by-products were stored on the floor without any containment, allowing liquid from the metal to escape. White liquid run off was seen coming from the metal and going directly into a drain.
In an interview, Donald Ward Limited said this occurred because a new driver at the company had put the metal turnings on the floor and not in the container. The company also admitted that the white liquid run off had come from the metal turnings on the floor and not any other source.
The company was very sorry for what had happened and the site has since been vastly improved and all drivers have embarked upon an NVQ training course to ensure that this does not happen again.
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On 1 April 2008, three Staffordshire defendants paid over £40,000 for the illegal deposit of waste on a demolition site at the former Johnson Matthey Works in Woodbank Street, Burslem, Stoke on Trent.
Roy Beech (Contractors) Ltd, of North Street, Stoke on Trent, was fined £18,250 and ordered to pay costs of £7,095.
Mark Tittensor, of Milton Road, Stoke on Trent, trading as Andy’s Skip Hire, was fined £4,500 and ordered to pay costs of £4,083.
Victoria Smith, of Aarons Drive, Bignall End, Stoke on Trent, was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay costs of £4,405.
Following suspicions of illegal waste activity, Environment Agency officers mounted a surveillance operation at the former Johnson Matthey Works, where demolition was in progress.
All the charges against the defendants related to the illegal deposit of controlled waste at the former works including tarmac, plastic sheets and tubing, tree cuttings, carpet, refuse bags, sanitary ware, a mattress and various building wastes such as breeze blocks and plasterboard.
Being a demolition site, although there was a registered PPC permit for the crushing of concrete, tile and brick, the site did not have a waste management licence authorising the deposit of the other waste recorded.
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Norfolk Environmental Waste Services was fined £13,000 and ordered to pay £4,153 costs for allowing brown steaming liquid waste to escape from Costessey Landfill, Norwich onto a neighbouring golf course causing part of it to be closed for health risk reasons.
The Health Protection Agency advised that even when it reopened, golfers should wear gloves and wash down any golf balls, shoes and clubs as well as washing their hands thoroughly to avoid the risk of ingestion.
After puddles were found on the site an Environment Agency officer traced the liquid to a pipe coming from the side of the landfill. Landfill site employees sealed it and cleaned up the puddles.
In 2006 the Environment Agency raised concerns about ponds of this liquid on the surface of the landfill site and about the delay in capping off waste containment areas that had been filled, to prevent rainwater getting in, adding more liquid to the liquid waste already in there.
The inspecting officer for Costessey landfill believes that before the incident involving the golf course in February 2007, Norfolk Environmental Waste Services failed to manage the leachate at the site to a satisfactory level. The operators were served with further enforcement notices in November 2007 for high levels of leachate, which was in breach of conditions.
Following the incident the company carried out their own water and soil testing and have restructured their management system to prevent a similar incident recurring. They are also investing in new technology to treat leachate.
After the hearing Environment Agency officer Roger Thomas said: ‘A company which is in the business of waste disposal has a duty to ensure that waste is kept, treated and disposed of in a manner that would prevent likely pollution of the environment or harm to human health. This case sends a clear message to other waste operators that where they put the environment at risk, the Environment Agency will take enforcement action’.
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