Castle Cement, Padeswood was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay costs of £14,850 last month after it admitted breaching four conditions of its cement manufacturing authorisation. Ongoing problems with fugitive dust emissions were recorded at the plant over a two-year period, despite Environment Agency (EA) warning letters. The breaches were filmed on time lapse video camera.
Source: IEM
Two Birmingham businessmen who illegally deposited skiploads of rubbish on their premises were fined a total of £5,000 following undercover EA action. In a surveillance operation between March and June 1998, full skips were seen taken on to the Ladywood site, emptied, sorted and then disposed of off-site.
Source: IEM
A Suffolk poultry farmer has been fined and awarded costs of £650 for polluting a tributary of the River Lark in August last year. Poor site management led to effluent from a manure storage pad joining the ditch, which runs through the site.
Source: IEM
The UK Environment Agency has taken action against Avonmouth firm Britannia Zince after the company discharged higher than permitted levels of cadmium into the Severn Estuary. The company notified the Agency that on two consecutive days in February it had exceeded the concentration limits released from the site. The EA served an enforcement notice which requires the company to carry out a thorough review of the management and control systems associated with liquid effluent discharge.
Source: IEM
Carlisle company Seymour Plant Hire has been fined £4,000 for illegally disposing of contaminated soil at an unsuitable Carlisle landfill site. Mistakes made by company staff resulted in loads of clean and contaminated soils being mixed up and sent to the wrong landfill. The contaminated soil containing wood preservatives.
Source: IEM
A major pollution incident which led to the death of 1,900 trout in an 11km stretch of a Herefordshire river last May, resulted in fines and costs of over £6,000 in a prosecution brought by the UK Environment Agency. JG Goring of Dorstone, Hereford pleaded guilty to causing liquid fertiliser to enter the River Dore. The company alerted the EA that there had been a spillage.
Source: IEM
AEA Technology plc has been served with an enforcement notice following a leak of radioactive water on its site at Winfrith, Dorset. Six hundred litres of contaminated water escaped from the titrium recovery plant onto a concrete hardstanding and some of the liquid entered the site drains. “Although we consider the radiological consequences of this leak to be insignificant we always treat any loss of control of radioactive materials very seriously,” said an EA inspector.
Source: IEM