The Birmingham-based company pleaded guilty to breaching its environmental permit and failing to comply with an enforcement notice at its Bordesley Green waste transfer station off Doris Road between 2012 and 2013.
Birmingham Crown Court heard how the company breached a condition of its permit by storing an excessive amount of commercial and demolition waste on site – discovered when a site audit was carried out by Environment Agency in November 2012.
An enforcement notice was served ordering Weir Waste to comply with the storage limit by January 2013 – but the Agency claims that the business failed to manage the waste entering the site and stockpiles further increased.
Suspension
A suspension notice was later served in March 2013 for a risk of ‘serious’ pollution, preventing the company from bringing anymore waste on to the site.
Yesterday (14 April), Weir Waste was fined £46,250 and ordered to pay court costs totalling £50,000. In sentencing, the Judge commented that the offences had been committed “recklessly” adding they were aggravated by the company continuing to accept waste at the site.
The Judge did however comment that the offences were mitigated by the fact that the company had no previous convictions as well as noting that any economic gain from the offending was tempered by hiring in equipment to remedy the issues and that the period of offending was short.
Commenting on the sentence, a spokeswoman for Weir Waste said a “perfect storm” of adverse weather conditions and a series of mechanical problems had led to its failure to comply with the enforcement notice both of which were acknowledged by the Judge. Once the suspension notice was served, the site was cleared in a short period, the spokeswoman said.
She added that the Judge had taken into account the “good character” of the company and was “pleased, if not impressed” Weir Waste would not be applying to renew the lease of its Doris Road site – moving operations to its “state of the art” transfer station in Trinity Street.
Trinity Street
Partly funded by WRAP, the £10 million Trinity Street facility processes commercial and industrial waste with residual material leftover further processed into refuse-derived fuel (RDF).
After the prosecution, the Environment Agency’s deputy director, Lisa Pinney, said: “The Environment Agency will take strong enforcement action when companies continue to store grossly excessive levels of waste even after they’ve been warned they must improve.
“We do everything we can to protect the environment and this case sends out a clear message that we will not hesitate to prosecute as necessary when environmental damage is caused.”
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