A PROMINENT Dublin waste contractor and two of his former employees have gone on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on charges of illegal dumping in Co Wicklow in the late 1990s.
Anthony Dean, owner of Dean Waste, Woodhaven, Milltown, Dublin, Laurence Creighton, Kill, Co Kildare and Pat Fitzharris, Knocklyon, Co Dublin, all deny illegal dumping and alleged environmental pollution at a Baltinglass site between January 1st and May 1st, 1998.
The three men have pleaded not guilty to disposing of lorry loads of waste at Whitestown in a manner likely to cause environmental pollution by creating a risk to the water, atmosphere, land, soil, plants or animals there. They have also pleaded not guilty to disposing of waste there without a licence during the same period.
Éanna Mulloy SC, prosecuting, told the jury that the alleged illegal dumping took place on a 47- to 49-acre site of farmland belonging to John O’Reilly, to whom planning permission had been granted in 1979 for a sand and gravel quarry on the site.
Mr Mulloy said the area of landfill the trial was concerned with comprised 200,000 cubic metres. Allowing for 60 per cent of that to be sand, the remaining 40 per cent, or 80,000 tonnes, was waste.
He said some of the waste related to times other than the period with which this trial was concerned.
Mr Mulloy said the waste present had been pre-shredded and compacted elsewhere before it was brought by lorries to the landfill site and there was evidence of a commercial, organised operation.
He said Mr Dean was the owner and controller of Dean Waste and an associated company A1 Waste, which had been incorporated in 1982 and had expanded since that time by buying out other waste operators. Mr Mulloy said Mr Fitzharris was the yard manager of A1 Waste at a sorting and specialised waste facility at Greenhills Road, Walkinstown.
He said there would be evidence Mr Fitzharris introduced the company to the Whitestown site and came to an arrangement with Mr O’Reilly about the terms of dumping there. It was alleged another employee, Mr Creighton, was sent to the Whitestown site and was there on a daily basis and involved in levelling off what was received.
Mr Mulloy said there would be evidence Mr Dean had admitted involvement in bringing lorry loads of waste to Whitestown from two of his waste facilities. He said Mr Dean had told gardaí he had looked for paperwork in relation to the site and when he was shown documentation on the 1979 planning permission, he believed the site was authorised.
Mr Mulloy said it was the prosecution’s case the land was never licensed for landfill, only for sand and gravel extraction, and told the jury it was for them to decide if the three men knew the site was unlicensed and unauthorised.
He said there would be also be evidence Mr Dean told gardaí that on one or two occasion he visited the Whitestown site there was an “overseer” from Wicklow County Council present.
Mr Mulloy said an investigation by environmental authorities began in November 2001 on part of the site and landfill number four, with which the trial is concerned, began to be investigated in March 2002.
He said the Whitestown site was bounded to the west by the N81 road and partly to the east by the river Carrigower, a tributary of the river Slaney.
The trial continues before Judge Desmond Hogan and a jury.