Farmer and his mother face €6.2m fine for illegal dump

An Enfield farmer and his mother were fined €6.26m at the High Court arising from their failure to clean up illegal dumping of waste including asbestos on their 253 acre farm eight years ago. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys directed the fine be paid to Meath Co Council to have the site cleaned up.

The contempt of court case against Fred Hendy (54) Ballynakill, Enfield and his elderly mother Eileen Hendy was taken by the council which had secured a High Court order in 2016 against the Hendys aimed at securing remediation of the landfill sites in line with recommendations of the Environmental Protection Agency and also required the Hendys to pay costs, not then quantified, towards that remediation.

The earlier court hearing before Mr Justice Seamus Noonan was told that Mrs Hendy lived with her daughter in a house on the lands while Fred Hendy and his family lived in another house nearby.

During that hearing, Mr Hendy said he farmed the lands and neither his mother nor his sister had any role in the waste activities.

The case arose from a visit by Meath County Council environmental engineer Declan Grimes to the Hendy farm following complaints of trucks entering the land in November 2012.

The engineer told a separate hearing before Trim Circuit Court that when he visited the farm he saw a mound of plastic, concrete blocks and timber dumped on a former pond covering half an acre with more rubbish including demolition and other waste dumped 400m away on another larger site close to a stream running into the Blackwater river.

Mr Grimes told the court he made a further visit to the farm accompanied by gardai and took a cautioned statement from Fred Hendy who claimed he was receiving €20 per load for the waste which was being used to fill in low-lying land and he added he was assured by Mr Hendy that no asbestos or hazardous waste was being dumped there.

However the engineer said that on further visits he noticed the dumping had continued and included hazardous broken asbestos whose fibres are cancer causing on the former pond site while contaminated water was flowing from the larger acre site into the stream.

“There was a strong smell of sulphur off the water like rotten eggs and the grass was burned white”, he said.

Fred Hendy had been warned not to move the asbestos but on a later visit the engineer found it had been removed.

“I never was told where it had gone”, said Mr Grimes who added that he had assessed the dumping as posing a high risk to the environment.

The council served a notice on the defendant in March 2012 to cease importing waste onto the farm and diaries for 2011 and 2012 seized from his home showed that 51 operators had been involved in dumping on the farm paying between €20 and €100 per load the court heard.

“The diaries gave an account of what was going on, details of who brought it in and when as well as the extent of the loads and the payments”, said the engineer.

Mr Grimes said that based on the diaries where the loads were categorised as rubbish, skip waste or muck and Hendy had been paid over €100k to accept the waste.

In a reserved judgement published this week following a High Court hearing in July Mr Justice Richard Humphreys found the Hendys in contempt of the 2016 order requiring them to clean up and reinstate the site and said they were not entitled to more time to comply.

The most appropriate option, and the one sought by Deirdre Hughes BL (counsel for the county council), was for the court to fine the Hendys the €6.26m costs of remediation, to be charged on the lands, he said.

The judge noted that the farm lands amounted to 253 acres and only three acres were contaminated which meant a large amount of the lands were available for sale. Eileen Hendy held eight ninths of them, one ninth was held by her late husband’s estate and the lands include the homes of both respondents.

Affidavits of means offered to the court on behalf of the Hendys referred to the lands being worth €665,000 but this was queried by the council’s lawyer and the judge said that cross examination on this issue may be needed in due course.

The fact the remediation costs are probably going to be in excess of the Hendy’s means was irrelevant Justice Humphries said.

The judge added that while Oisin Collins BL (counsel for the Hendys) had argued a fine would infringe his clients property and other rights, those rights were subordinate to the requirement to comply with court orders which they had not done.

“I should emphasise that the fine I am ordering in this case is coercive rather than punitive in the sense that the purpose of the fine is not to punish the respondents for their three year long contempt of court by failing to comply with Mr Justice Noonan’s order but to ensure the remediation actually happens. As the respondents have squandered the opportunity to do that themselves I am ordering the remediation will be done on the direction of the council. I will ensure that the coercive aspect is built into the order, however, by requiring the council to return any balance to the respondents if the remediation can be achieved within the scope of monies recovered from the respondents, making due allowance for the council’s entitlement to costs and interest’, he added.

The court’s ruling was welcomed by Meath County Council.

“The verdict sends out a very strong message to those willing to participate in and facilitate illegal waste activities which are harmful to the Environment,” a spokesperson said.