Suez Recycling and Recovery has been ordered to pay more than half a million pounds in fines and costs for a series of offences at a landfill site in Cornwall.
Levels of contaminated water at the waste operator’s site at Connon Bridge near Liskeard increased after heavy rain in 2012, breaching the limits specified by its environmental permit. The Environment Agency investigated after receiving complaints from members of the public. Officers found two nearby streams smothered in sewage fungus for around 4km, which they described as the worst in the area for 20 years.
The agency found that surface water had been contaminated by leachate and groundwater quality in a drainage culvert beneath the site had been damaged. The regulator also said Suez had pumped large volumes of contaminated surface water onto fields next to the site, for which it did not have authorisation.
Agency officer Simon Harry said: ‘People living close to Connon Bridge landfill will not have forgotten the appalling odours that emanated from this site in 2013. The judge in this case acknowledged, in particular, the distress caused to the local community by the odour.’
Truro Crown Court fined Suez £180,000 and ordered it to pay £325,000 costs. The firm had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to six offences under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010. These were: failure to comply with leachate level limits specified by an environmental permit; allowing leachate to overflow from an extraction point; unauthorised emissions of contaminated water; failure to comply with water quality emission limits; failure to notify the Environment Agency; and causing odour pollution.
The costs awarded by the court reflected the length of the investigation and prosecution of the case, which took four years.
A spokesperson for Suez said: ‘Like many other landfill sites around the country, Connon Bridge experienced issues managing leachate and landfill gas during the exceptionally wet weather conditions experienced throughout 2012.
‘We deeply regret that, despite our best endeavours, we were unable to maintain full compliance at the site during 2012 and early 2013 but are pleased that the judge recognised that our overall compliance record, across our 211 operational sites (of which 11 are active landfills), around the country is good and we do our best to manage waste in compliance with our environmental permits,’ he said.
He pointed out that the firm had pleaded guilty to six of the 11 charges brought by the regulator at the earliest opportunity. The five contested charges were not pursued.
Measures to improve leachate management at the site if there is a further period of prolonged heavy rainfall had been implemented, the spokesperson confirmed. These include: reducing the size of the operational area; increasing the use of temporary capping to reduce rainfall entering the waste; upgrading the leachate treatment plant to improve the efficiency and the volume it can handle; and increasing the dedicated extraction of leachate from gas wells.
