£1M for legal fight over controversial Staffordshire landfill
Councillors give the green-light for quarry war chest
Senior councillors have given the go-ahead for £1 million to be put towards a legal fight - against a controversial landfill in Newcastle.
Foul odours coming from around Walleys Quarry in Silverdale are continuing to making residents' lives a misery - with thousands of complaints lodged.
The council does not have any powers to suspend, restrict or close operations at the landfill site, leader Simon Tagg said, and cabinet members were not asked to authorise an abatement notice against Walleys Quarry Ltd at Wednesday’s meeting.
But they were able to approve the £1m “war chest”, which will come out of the authority’s £3m reserves, to meet potential legal costs of serving an abatement notice if this decision is made by council officers. And if the council’s case proves successful the operator could face a hefty fine.
Councillor Tagg said: “Council officers have worked tirelessly over the last few months to gather evidence towards the potential statutory nuisance abatement case against the company formally known as Red Industries. This will be a significant step for the council to take.
“Despite some of the capping that has taken place and other measures which the Environment Agency have requested through the many breaches that have been identified over the last few months on the site it continues to impact our communities and there have been recent warnings about the potential long-term health impacts from Public Health England.
“Complaints continue to be received in significant numbers. Air quality monitoring equipment indicates that concentrations of hydrogen sulphate in the air remain high.
“Our residents have been suffering for far too long because of these foul gases coming from the landfill and it is clear the operator is not doing enough to resolve the problem. We must consider stepping in with the only powers the council has as the local authority to improve the situation, but this will involve potentially committing to a hefty financial burden.
“The council has already funded specialist advice this year and now we need to consider a further commitment of resources to allow council officers to proceed towards a nuisance abatement notice. If we allocate this funding the council’s head of environmental health will then determine whether the issues of the gas smells from Walleys Quarry do amount to a statutory nuisance before taking action.
“We’re not here today to decide on an abatement notice or whether the council takes action, all we’re doing is allotting resources to make sure that our environmental health officer can make that decision in the knowledge that we could carry through a court case against the operator of the landfill.”
Fellow cabinet members gave their backing to the £1m fighting fund.
Deputy leader Stephen Sweeney said: “At the end of the day I think the Environment Agency should be doing this - I don’t think it should be us. But obviously the Environment Agency aren’t going to do it so we’ve got to do it.
“I don’t think we’ve got any choice about the matter - what else are we supposed to do? The smell is disgusting, it’s not going away. If we don’t do anything about it, it will just be there forever and a day and no-one else seems prepared to act."
“It’s a long process, it’s not a five-minute job and this will go on for a while. I don’t think our residents would regard the £1m as money we shouldn’t be spending on this because everybody is sick to death of this wretched smell.”
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