John Burnett, a former Director of Mayfield-based Dalkeith Demolition Limited, has been fined £700 after he was found guilty of breaching the conditions of a waste management licence (WML).
Edinburgh Sheriff Court found that Burnett had contravened several terms of the licence held for a site on the Mayfield Industrial Estate in Dalkeith.
Burnett was reported to the Procurator Fiscal’s Office by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) following ‘repeated attempts to ensure the storage of waste on an impermeable surface, as stipulated under the terms of the licence’.
The site was subjected to regular inspections by SEPA officers between 2007 and 2011, and in March 2011 received a ‘poor’ rating under SEPA’s compliance assessment scheme, due to waste being stored on an area of the site that had not been adequately surfaced.
According to SEPA, ‘any waste which is not stored on an impermeable surface has the potential to pollute the surrounding landscape and cause serious environmental harm to the local area’.
On 23 March 2011, Burnett was notified in writing by SEPA that he had a four-month period to rectify the situation, but a further inspection on 1 August found that a quantity of waste was still being stored on an inappropriate area of the site.
During a follow-up inspection on 24 August, SEPA officers noted that the quantity of waste on site exceeded the limit of 1000 tonnes permitted by Burnett’s licence, a significant amount of which ‘was sitting out with the impermeable surface area’.
This situation remained unchanged until Dalkeith Demolition Limited went into voluntary liquidation in January 2012, leaving a ‘large quantity of waste’ behind at the site.
Speaking of the case, SEPA’s reporting officer Michael Smith said: “Despite repeatedly advising Burnett that waste needed to be stored on an appropriate site surface this did not materialise and as a result there was a risk of damage to the environment.
“By continuing to accept and store waste on areas of the site where there was clearly no capacity, Mr. Burnett blatantly chose to disregard the terms of the licence and risk contaminating the local environment.”
Find out more about SEPA’s waste regulations.
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