Attwood shuts down Faughanside waste plant in unprecedented ‘big blow’ against ‘immense and appalling’ activity

Over the past year the Department of the Environment (DoE) has undertaken a full scale investigation - codenamed Operation Sycamore - into the suspected illegal landfilling of waste at a Faughanside site in the Mobuoy area.

Mr Attwood said he hoped to be in a position to send a file to the Public Prosecution Service in the near future.

The investigation was launched in Spring 2012 after a DoE officer noticed bubbles in a pond in what turned out to be a totally illegal landfilling site near the waste management facility. The officer believed the bubbles may have been caused by methane escaped from buried landfill.

Over the past year the DoE dug 98 trail pits, sunk 28 bore holes and carried out four inspections of the area.

At four sites near the waste managment facility, Mr Attwood believes hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste - including from two Northern Ireland local authorities - were covered with clay, sand and topsoil, sometimes nocturnally.

Asked how big the sites were, the head of the DoE’s Environmental Crime Unit said one stretched for as far as the eye could see.

Mr Attwood said: “My Department has decisively moved against unlawful waste activity in Northern Ireland. Following receipt of intelligence last year I instructed the environmental police within my Department - the Environmental Crime Unit - to undertake a full scale investigation (known as Operation Sycamore) into activities at the Derry site.

“This has been painstaking work with the aim of maximising the chances of dealing a big blow to serious criminality and a big blow to environmental vandalism.

“The scale of the unlawful waste activity is immense and appalling and dates back at least until 2009. It is sophisticated in its deception. Material was mangled and shredded to hide its original sourcing, with illegal landfills being topfilled with soil and clay to deceive and hide illegal waste.

“Not just tens but some hundreds of thousands of tons of waste have been illegally deposited in a number of areas of land in the Mobuoy area, just outside Derry.

“The scale of this is clearly well organised - the scale of this means it involves organised crime. Where I find proper grounds to move against any waste operators who may be involved.”

More later.