The owner of Dinham Farm Caravan Park has been ordered to pay £3,615 in fines and costs for illegally burning controlled waste including 80 old car tyres.

Stephen Mabley, 49, of Dinham Farm, St Minver, Wadebridge was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay costs of £2,115 by Bodmin magistrates for offences under the Clean Air Act 1993 and Environmental Protection Act 1990 in a joint prosecution by Cornwall Council and the Environment Agency. The case was heard on October 20.

On March 23, 2010, an officer from Cornwall Council’s Environmental Protection team was travelling through St Minver when she saw plumes of thick black smoke coming from Dinham Farm Caravan Park, which was roughly a kilometre away.

She alerted Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service who extinguished the fire, which proved to be a mixture of green waste and at least 80 old tyres. It was the burning tyres that caused the black smoke. The officer also notified the Environment Agency.

In mitigation, Mr Mabley said he had employed contractors to tidy up the site and remove tree stumps to a field to be burned. However, the contractors took the tyres as well, which had been left beside a disused sileage clamp, and burned them without his knowledge while he was elsewhere on the site.

Lance Kennedy, Cornwall Council’s Cabinet member for Community Safety and Neighbourhoods, said: “This is an appalling example of environmental crime; it is essential for Cornwall and its residents and visitors that we continue such immediate enforcement. Every such incident has a financial cost that must be met from increasingly limited public funds.”

Controlled waste, such as tyres, should not be burned but disposed of in a legal manner via a registered waste carrier or using waste exemptions. To find out more, visitwww.environment-agency.gov.uk.

Anyone wishing to report an environmental incident can contact Cornwall Council on 0300 1234 212 or the Environment Agency on 0800 807060.

Source: Cornwall Council