RK Transport to pay £100,000 for waste offences

Cornish haulage and waste management company, RK Transport, have been ordered by courts to pay over £100,000 in fines and costs for illegally disposing of waste in two Cornish waste sites.

The Environment Agency brought the case before Bodmin Magistrates Court, after Agency officers in 2010 had conducted an inspection of RK Transport’s 250-metre long bund around the waste transfer station at Kennards House in Launceston and found decomposing materials, despite the bund’s planning permission stating that it should be entirely constructed of soil, stones and/or other inert materials.

Agents found pieces of glass, metal, wood, rubber, wire, steel reinforcing rods and asbestos in the bund and noted a ‘very strong smell of landfill gas’ that suggested materials in the bund were decomposing, something inert materials do not do. Since the bund was found to contain materials that were not purely inert, RK Transport should have been disposing of the materials at landfill, paying the higher rate of £64 per tonne.

Adrian Kneebone, known locally as Roger, owns the majority share of RK Transport and said the bund contained approximately 8,000 tonnes of material that had come from various waste sites including one on the outskirts of Plymouth. When the agents visited the waste company that had provided the waste for the bund, they found that much of it was unsuitable for bund construction without further processing. 9,450 tonnes of construction and demolition waste and 2,499 tonnes of household waste from civic amenity sites were used for the bund and analysis of samples taken confirmed the presence of asbestos and metals.

Officers also visited West Honiton Farm near Launceston where RK Transport and Mr Kneebone had obtained an exemption to deposit up to 2,500 tonnes of subsoil and shillet to maintain and repair tracks and a farmyard. Here, inspectors discovered a flattened area protruding out over a steep-sloping field which included plastic pipes, pieces of metal, a plastic drum pipe, car tyre, green waste, silicone cartridges, concrete reinforcing bar, plastic twine, fabric and wood. These are all non-exempt items and are liable for the higher band of landfill tax.

"The defendant is an experienced waste operator and knew the types of wastes that were not acceptable for deposit at these two sites. He was motivated by profit and saved a considerable amount of money by not taking this waste to a landfill for safe disposal. The Environment Agency will not tolerate the abuse of U1 exemptions and will use all its investigatory powers to deal with this type of environmental crime," said Alison Gidlow at the Environment Agency.

Appearing before a judge at Bodmin Magistrates Court, Adrian Kneebone was fined £30,000 and ordered to pay £36,525 costs after pleading guilty to two offences under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2007 including the illegal use of unsuitable waste to create an earth bund at Kennards House, Launceston and illegally depositing waste on land at West Honiton Farm, Launceston.

RK Transport Ltd was fined £40,000 for the same offences. Both Adrian Kneebone and RK Transport also had to pay a £15.00 victim surcharge, raising the total fines to £106,555. RK Transport has since released a statement saying that they are considering applying for appeal.

Roger Kneebone told Resource: “The Environment Agency (EA) had been involved in the planning, consultation and building processes of the bund in 2009 and did not make any adverse comments, then at the end of the year they tell us it’s inadequate. How can I trust the EA when they oversee projects in the future that the same won’t happen again? How can one run a business like that? I know lots of businesses that feel the same way as I do: that it’s impossible to work with EA under conditions like that.”

RK Transport Ltd released a statement saying that though they are unable to comment fully about this case at present due to possible appeal proceedings, they felt “compelled” to point out that the EA were “paid in excess of £3,000 by RK Transport Ltd in site monitoring fees during 2009, [the bund’s] year of construction...Both the Planning Application process and the construction of the Bank occurred in full consultation with the Environment Agency”.

RK Transport added that although no-one from the EA had raised concerns about the composition of the material in the bund before December 2009 (which the Agency themselves acknowledged in court), “in full co-operation, as soon as a concern was raised by Environment Agency Officers, RK Transport Ltd acted upon the advice and ceased using the material in question”. RK Transport went on to urge that the building of the bund was ‘never a disposal operation, but a legitimate construction project, conducted openly and monitored by the Environment Agency throughout.’

The Environment Agency confirmed in court this week that they had assessed the risk as “having the potential for minor environmental impact” and that they “did not require its removal”.