A 77-year-old man has been fined £250 for unlawfully keeping 5,800 tonnes of buried waste.
James McCooey, of Thyholland, Co. Monaghan, pleaded guilty to the offence on February 22 this year at Newry Crown Court.
He was charged with keeping controlled waste without a waste management licence. Six other similar charges directed against him were not proceeded with and left on the books.
Today (Thursday), he was fined £250 at Craigavon Crown Court.
The offence relates to the unauthorised keeping of controlled waste at a site owned by McCooey in Middletown, Co. Armagh.
The site was visited on various occasions between November 2016 and November 2017 by officers from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) who identified that McCooey was unlawfully keeping, by way of burial, approximately 5,800 tonnes of controlled waste including soil, clay, concrete, brick, wood, metal and plastics.
His defence solicitor told the court: “Regrettably, quite some time ago, he bought a parcel of land, and two thirds was excellent land, one third had been used as a dumping ground by many. That was clearly a very foolish decision. The instructing solicitor that that he used for that conveyance was struck off for three years …it was a very poor purchase.”
“…it is his intention to do what he can to assist in the removal of the waste.
“He has gates up and unfortunately, he doesn’t live on site; he lives somewhere in the region of three or four miles away from the site and he has recently caught people trying to further fly-tip on the land……he was successful in preventing it but this parcel of land that clearly has a huge amount of waste on it is an absolute headache to the family, he bitterly regrets taking it on board.”
The Department requested that McCooey remove and dispose of the waste lawfully in accordance with legislation, however he failed to do so.
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