Wiltshire farmer who ran illegal landfill ordered to pay back £209,980.00
A farm owner who operated an illegal landfill on his land in Wiltshire has been ordered to repay £209,980.00 under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, as amended. He has also been warned that he faces two years imprisonment if he does not pay.
Mr Guy Wentworth, 73, of Ewins Hill Farm, Aldbourne, Marlborough, Wiltshire was convicted on 21 March 2011 after pleading guilty to one charge of operating, between April 2006 and July 2010, his farm as a landfill for the depositing of waste without an environmental permit or exemption certificate.
At the sentencing hearing at Salisbury Crown Court on 6 May 2011 the judge said that the repeated warnings by the Environment Agency and lack of response by the defendant made this a serious offence which crossed the custodial threshold for sentencing. For the offence Mr Wentworth was sentenced at Salisbury Crown Court to a term of six months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. At this hearing the Environment Agency made an application for confiscation of Mr Wentworth’s assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The confiscation application was determined on 21 October 2013, when Mr Wentworth was ordered to pay the sum of £209,980.00, representing the benefit resulting from his crime. This sum must be paid within 6 months of the date of this order and in default Mr Wentworth will serve two years imprisonment. Upon his release he will still be required to pay the full outstanding sum together with any interest added. He was also ordered to pay a contribution towards the Environment Agency’s costs in the sum of £10,000.
During the sentencing hearing on 6 May 2011, the court heard that Environment Agency officers visited the farm twice in 2006 for the purposes of inspecting a lawful recycling operation conducted by a company on a small part of the farm. Whilst at the farm they noticed that a landfilling operation was being conducted by Mr Wentworth on another part of the farm, an area that did not have a permit or a certificate of exemption.
The chalk strata that underlies that part of the farm was being strip excavated and stockpiled and the void was being backfilled. The court heard that the waste was directly trucked into the landfill area both from off the farm and from the recycling facility in the farm. The quantity of fill was assessed as 36,000 cubic metres.
Despite the directions of officers on numerous occasions over the next three years that these activities were unlawful, Mr Wentworth continued to excavate the chalk and landfill the waste, which included raising the level of the backfilled land in places.
Mr Wentworth pleaded guilty to breaches of Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act, which prohibits unauthorised disposal of waste.
Fine for persistent waste offender
Skips loaded with waste were stored on a Bedford Farm without the owner’s permission. The owners of the farm had initially allowed Kenneth Murphy to park his skip lorry at the site and then agreed to allow him to store empty skips there but had never agreed to allow him to bring in full ones.
Bedford and Mid Beds Magistrates’ Court was told that the waste, which was mainly household clearance and construction waste, should all have been taken directly to be disposed of at a permitted site.
On 10 October 2012 Mr Murphy, of Church Road, Steatley, Luton, was fined £3,333 for illegal waste activities at Hill Farm in Flitwick Road, Maulden. He was also ordered to pay costs £3,099.45 and a victim surcharge of £120.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency, said despite being asked both verbally and in a letter by the owners not to bring any more waste to the site, Murphy continued to take his waste there into 2012.
CCTV footage taken on 3 September 2012 showed a 12-yard skip being emptied into an empty skip already at the site and a smaller one arriving at the site and being left there. Environment Agency Officers went to the site the following day and saw six skips full of waste. A week later a notice was served by the Agency to remove all the waste from the farm.
It was not cleared completely until 20 November 2012 and from records held by local licensed waste sites only one of the skips was taken there. Mr Murphy claimed he left the clearance of the site largely to his stepson Mr Fletcher but that any records of where it had been taken was destroyed in a lorry fire in November 2012.
He told investigating Agency officers that he took the full skips to the farm because at the time he could not afford to take the waste to a proper permitted site.
Mr Murphy has two previous convictions for illegal waste activities in 2010 and pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 12 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010, which requires operators of regulated facilities to hold a suitable permit.
Cowdray Estate prosecuted for Midhurst river pollution that killed 4,000 fish
The Cowdray Estate has been prosecuted by the Environment Agency for polluting 5km of a West Sussex watercourse which resulted in the deaths of 4,000 fish at a Fernhurst fish farm.
The Cowdray Estate of Cowdray Park, Easebourne, Midhurst, West Sussex appeared at Worthing Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday 9 October. The Estate pleaded guilty to the offence and was fined £5,000, ordered to pay costs of £10,596 and £120 victim surcharge.
In July 2012 logging and transportation of the cut timber for sale took place during the very wet conditions and resulted in the escape of soil sediment from uprooted trees and the wet ground conditions. This highly polluting sediment ran off the wet land and straight into a local watercourse. This had a major impact on a tributary of the River Lod which runs through the area.
On 10 July 2012, Surney Fish Farm contacted the Environment Agency to report a major fish kill. Environment Agency officers had also visited the fish farm the previous month regarding reports of sediment entering one of the lakes. Environment Agency officers confirmed that the fish farm had been significantly polluted by sedimentation. This pollution was traced to Verdley Wood where forestry activities were still ongoing by Cowdray Estate staff without regard to the persistent heavy rainfall and deteriorating ground conditions.
The Estate was instructed to install siltation traps in the watercourse to minimise any further pollution and to stop all work at the site immediately. Investigations found that 5km of the watercourse had been adversely affected and the pollution had entered the fish farm killing over 4,000 fish. As a result the water intake into the fish farm had to be stopped for a number of days which had additional adverse impacts for the business.
The Cowdray Estate apologised for the incident and said at no stage was the offence carried out deliberately. The Estate also co-operated fully with the Environment Agency regarding the incident investigation.
Magistrates presiding over the case acknowledged the Estate’s willingness to assist the Environment Agency throughout the incident and their previous good record. However they said they were careless in carrying out the work in such extreme rainfall and this resulted in serious consequences for the local environment.
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