A COMPANY has been hit with fines totalling more than £100,000 for using bio-sludge waste in Winsford and Middlewich.

Trade Effluent Services Ltd, which provides recycling and waste management services, were charged with breaching their permit for mobile plant spreading.

The company appeared before Llandudno Magistrates Court and entered guilty pleas to three charges brought by the Environment Agency and a further seven charges by National Resources Wales.

The company was fined £10,000 per charge resulting in a fine of £30,000 for the charges brought by the Environment Agency and a full award of costs of £16,851.

The company was also fined a total of £70,000 with £13,900 costs payable to NRW. The company pleaded guilty to seven offences of spreading waste contrary to their environmental permit.

The company had spread 200,260kg of bio sludge waste at Bradshaw Park Farm in Middlewich and 127,690kg of bio sludge waste at Blakeden Farm in Winsford in May 2015.

Tracey Rimmer, environment manager for the Environment Agency, said: “We take incidents of this nature extremely seriously and have rules in place for a good reason.

“Thankfully there was no environmental impact and the company have since increased their environmental teams and introduced a system of compliance monitoring.

“I hope this sentencing demonstrates that we will not hesitate to take enforcement action when environmental permits are breached.”

To operate a waste management business there must be an environmental permit for the site issued by the Environment Agency. The permit has conditions within it which are designed to ensure that the activity does not have an adverse effect on the environment or impact the local community.

The bio-sludge waste, which is the sludge resulting from a biological waste treatment plant, was not an approved waste within the deployments permitted by the Environment Agency.

In mitigation the defendant stated they found it difficult to be regulated by two different agencies who adopt slight variations in regulating the activities conducted by the company; there was no harm caused and the Environment Agency accepted the waste streams at a later date.

In passing the sentence, the District Judge Jones stated that when accepting additional streams of business the company knew they were required to comply with regulations and should have conducted an analysis. They made a commercial decision that led to a deliberate failure by the organisation to comply with their regulatory obligations.

Rhys Ellis, regulatory officer for NRW, said: “Our environment provides us with our basic needs, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat – it’s important to protect it.

“That’s why activities such as this need environmental permits which set out the rules that companies have to follow so they do not pose a risk to the environment and local people. “When a company ignores those rules, whether for commercial gain or poor management, we will always take the appropriate steps to protect our natural resources.”