13/05/2005 - A Ramsbottom
company and its director were ordered to pay
out over £52,000 in fines, compensation
and costs at Wirral Magistrates’ Court yesterday
(Thursday) after admitting to running an illegal
waste disposal business.
The Agency told the court how Arthur Morgan
had run his company B&K Metals as a paint
product recycling company, charging clients
for the disposal of unwanted paints and solvents.
However, instead of dealing with the waste
safely and legally, Morgan had stockpiled
them in a Birkenhead warehouse.
"When waste operators don’t act responsibly,
the environment and public safety can be put
at risk," said Environment Agency Special
Enforcement Officer David Owen. "In this
case we found hundreds of drums of hazardous
chemicals, some of which were leaking on to
the ground, being stored at an unlicensed
site in a totally inappropriate way. Many
of them were flammable and capable of causing
skin burns.
"This kind of waste must be taken to
licensed sites, regulated by the Agency and
with safeguards in place to protect the environment
and human health."
Finola Eyers, prosecuting for the Environment
Agency, told the court how the Merseyside
Fire Service had called the Agency to a unit
at the Gadya Industrial Park in Birkenhead
in May 2002, having found around 800 chemical
drums and up to 6,000 smaller containers being
kept in a warehouse.
The Agency and the Fire Service had to take
immediate action to stop leaking paint products
from getting into the drainage system and
were so concerned about the safety of the
site that police had to guard it overnight
while the Agency made arrangements for a contractor
to take the waste away the next day. The total
clean-up and disposal costs came to £80,000
– fortunately, these costs have been recovered.
The Agency’s investigations revealed that
B&K Metals Limited had misled its clients
into assuming that their unwanted paint products
would be taken to a licensed site run by another
waste operator. The company did not have the
licences it needed to carry out this kind
of work. In choosing to operate illegally,
it avoided the fees and environmental restrictions
to which it would have been subject had it
registered with the Agency.
As well as fines of £12,000 for B&K
Metals and £10,000 for Arthur Morgan
as its director, both the company and Morgan
were ordered to pay compensation and costs
to the Environment Agency and compensation
to a licensed waste company which helped with
the clean-up of the Birkenhead site. As a
result, the total cost to Morgan and his company
was £52,566.28.
