North Antrim farmer fined £6,000 for dumping 500 tonnes of controlled waste
A north Antrim farmer has been fined £6,000 after admitting depositing 500 tonnes of controlled waste on his land.
Imposing £3,000 fines in each of the two charges Alan Chestnutt faced, Antrim Crown Court judge Alistair Devlin said given the fact the 52-year-old had been interviewed for an earlier offence when NI Environment Agency inspectors spotted further waste on his land, the defendant's actions must “be regarded as having been either wholly intentional or at the very least as reckless”.
He said given Chestnutt’s involvement in another offence not yet been dealt with, “the defendant cannot for one moment have reasonably believed that he was lawfully permitted to act as he chose to act”.
While the Crown case was that Chestnutt benefitted to around £15,750, the defence contended that taking account of gate fees and landfill tax, the criminal benefit was £7,450 and in passing sentence, Judge Devlin said he was ”broadly accepting” of the lower figure.
At an earlier hearing Chestnutt, of Haw Road, Bushmills, entered guilty pleas to two offences of depositing and keeping controlled waste on dates between June 10, 2021 and May 22, 2022.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge alluded to the fact that the court is “aware that you have been prosecuted and have pleaded guilty in another case involving another site” in proceedings still awaiting sentence.
That case relates to Chestnutt dumping 18,000 tonnes of controlled waste on land on the Cabragh Road, Bushmills between January 2017 and January 2019.
Judge Devlin said the offences before him on Tuesday related to 500 tonnes of concrete, tarmac, rubble and top soil being dumped on a different Cabragh Road site.
In June 2021 two inspectors from NIEA saw two lorries “in the course of depositing soil and clay on the site” and when they spoke to the drivers, they confirmed they were there at Chestnutt’s request.
The following March, NIEA investigators attended the site and “upon arrival, they noted a number of pieces of tar and concrete at the entrance to the field.
"They also noted between 40 and 50 mounds of soil, clay, concrete and rubble, and behind those mounds they noted a levelled area which seemed to have been infilled before being flattened and the two officers estimated about 500 tons of material to be present on the surface of the ground,” Judge Devlin said.
When Chestnutt was spoken to he “agreed that there had been approximately 500 tons deposited on the site”.
During formal interviews Chestnutt claimed clay had been drawn to the site but other materials “was from another farm”. He accepted he had no waste transfer notes and he had not applied for authorisation to deposit the materials in question.
Judge Devlin said he accepted the materials in this case were non-hazardous and not caused environmental damage.
He highlighted that having been interviewed about the other offences in April 2018, “the fact that the defendant came to commit these current offences at a time well after he had already been found by enforcement officers to have been depositing substantial quantities of waste, a very short distance away…must rank as a significant aggregating feature of this current offending, rendering his actions and state of mind at the relevant time as being at the very least reckless and probably intentional.”