According to the Environment Agency, which brought the charge against the company, the offence took place at a site off Fordshill Road in Hereford, where no environmental permit had been in force for the activities.
The company was fined £18,000, ordered to pay £7,732.75 in costs, along with a £120 victim surcharge at Hereford Crown Court on Friday (May 29), after pleading guilty to one charge of breaching the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations.
Outlining details of its investigation, the Environment Agency said that it had become aware of the illegal storage on the site in June 2012 and instructed E2L to remove the waste and cease operating in this area until the correct permits had been obtained.
E2L claimed that it had been using the land, which is adjacent to a permitted site operated by the company, as a processing area for soil and aggregates.
Processing of aggregates had legally been carried out on the site without a permit for around 10 years, the company claimed, but changes to permitting rules meant that the company was required to apply for a permit to handle the material on the site..
E2L had submitted a planning application to develop a waste washing facility on the land which would enable it to recycle some of the waste. The Environment Agency agreed any enforcement action would be put on hold pending the outcome of the planning application.
However, in March 2013, Herefordshire council refused E2L’s planning application and the Agency reinstated the enforcement action, contacting E2L to request a timetable for removal of the waste.
Removal
E2L confirmed at the end of May 2013 that it would be able to remove all the waste within six months, whereby the Agency set a 30 November 2013 deadline for removal of the material. E2L later requested that the deadline be extended until 31 January 2014, which was granted.
On 2 December 2013, Environment Agency officers alleged fresh waste had been tipped on the site – an allegation that E2L has denied, instead claiming that the material had been segregated and screened to maximise recovery.
The Agency also claimed that on 31 January 2014, the date for final compliance with the notice, there were still three large heaps of waste amounting to around 12,000 tonnes on site. By mid-August 2014 half of the waste had been removed, leaving 6,000 tonnes still being stored on the site illegally, according to the Agency.
Compliance
Speaking after the case, an Environment Agency officer in charge of the investigation said: “E2L were fully aware of their obligations to comply with the environmental permitting rules but chose to ignore them.
“For over two years E2L did not take the Environment Agency’s continuous interventions seriously and failed to remove the illegally stored waste, instead they continued to deposit fresh waste on the site which left prosecution the only possible course of action. We take waste crime extremely seriously and will not hesitate to prosecute in cases such as this.”
Commenting after the hearing, a spokesman for E2L said: “The company accepts that it is fully aware of its obligations and that it did not remove all the inert materials in the given time, but maintains that the entire process was hindered by red tape, stifling what is a successful recycling process.”
E2L has also submitted planning and permit applications to develop a washing facility to process the remaining material.
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