The Environment Agency have released news that they have issued yet another enforcement notice to Walley’s Quarry Ltd.
In my view this only provides further evidence that Walley’s Quarry Ltd are clearly not a fit and proper operator.
The notice is again to do with acceptance and pre-acceptance procedures. The EA served a notice in July last year demanding improvements to the company's processes.
This enforcement notice, which follows a breach assessed at Category 2, will be a lot more restrictive: every batch of trommel fines sent to the landfill (essentially ground-down building waste) must now be laboratory tested by the supplier before Walley's can accept it. The content of every batch must be tested, rather than just a random sample.
The EA have also been testing surface-level waste on the site for high levels of sulphates and have not found evidence of this. However, as both I and the community have pointed out, it is apparent that some lorries do not deliver on days when they are aware of an Environment Agency presence on site.
Accordingly these new waste-acceptance conditions are very welcome. Even if the operator chooses to appeal, the conditions will apply until the appeal is determined.
On the recent upticks in odour, the EA informed me that the increases we saw earlier in the year were attributed to weather conditions, but the odour detected last week is not likely to be. They are currently investigating the possible reasons, which may involve the gas management system.
I would like to thank the EA for briefing me on this yesterday over Teams. In that meeting, I again encouraged the EA to bring their two investigations to a close as soon as possible. The community need accountability for the blight that everyone has suffered at the hands of this operator.
However, given that the operator have appealed every step of the way (I suspect they will appeal today's enforcement notice too), the EA do need to build a watertight legal case and I appreciate that this does take time.
You can read more on the EA's Engagement HQ website.