Director banned for landfill failings

6:59am Saturday 10th May 2008

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THE director of a west Oxfordshire company has been ordered to pay £6,000 costs and banned from being a company director for five years after a prosecution by the Environment Agency.

Thomas Smyth, of Solihull, Birmingham, sole director of Selectface Ltd, which ran a landfill site at Enstone Quarry, near Chipping Norton, was found guilty at Witney Magistrates' Court of failing to comply with a closure notice and three counts of breaches of waste management licence conditions at the site in 2005 and 2006.

Selectface failed to submit a pollution prevention and control permit application, which would have allowed it to continue disposing of waste at the landfill site, by a November 2004 deadline.

The company also failed to pay annual subsistence fees to the agency for 2005 and the agency required a report to be submitted to ensure continued proper management of the landfill, but Selectface failed to do so.

Joe Cuthbertson, investigating officer for the Environment Agency, said: "Mr Smyth's company was responsible for a series of offences.

"Landfill sites such as Enstone Quarry can produce methane, a greenhouse gas, and leachate, a contaminated liquid, which pose a risk to groundwater.

"Landfills require extensive management and environmental monitoring. Mr Smyth's failure to submit this important data means we have been unable to measure the site's effect on the environment.

"We will now be carrying out and funding our own monitoring of the site."