Cyanide dumping lands Wolverhampton firm £180,000 bill
A firm has been hit with a £180,000 bill for illegally dumping cyanide into water courses in the Black Country.
Serial offender Beronhill notched up numerous convictions for similar offences and repeatedly ignored warnings to clean up its act, a court heard.
When the cyanide levels were uncovered, the Wolverhampton-based electroplating firm challenged the results, even suggesting Severn Trent Water introduced it in their sampling equipment.
Waste from the firm goes to Barnhurst Sewage Treatment Works in Oxley which discharges into both the Shropshire Union and Staffordshire and Worcestershire canals.
Mr Oliver Willmott, prosecuting on behalf of Severn Trent Water, said that in a sample taken on February 7, 2015, cyanide was found at more than two-and-a-half times the agreed limit for the firm which is based at the corner of Lower Walsall Street and Corser Street, in Horseley Fields.
Further samples taken on November 11 the same year recorded zinc at more than two times the limit and chemical oxygen demand (COD) at two-and-a-half times the legal measure.
The Barnhurst works, which treats waste from across Wolverhampton and Perton, has a high zinc load given it takes waste from nine electroplaters, said Mr Willmott.
He added: “Because of the high concentration of these firms in the area, it is critical each one sticks to their limits. There is a risk that rather than being put to good use, sludge has to be sent to landfill.”
The company, which stopped using cyanide in 2009, also suggested that the cyanide finding was an error, a rogue result or a one-off event, with an old bottle of cyanide being found and emptied into the treatment pit, a practice it called 'standard'.
But Judge Barry Berlin said even if that was the case, it showed 'a patent cavalier behaviour symbolic of a company not living up to its responsibilities'.
He 'wholly rejected' the notion that Severn Trent Water used contaminated bottles when collecting samples, describing Beronhill's actions in the context of their past offending as 'deliberate'.
This was not a minor problem, as claimed by the company, but 'an ongoing and significant one', said the judge.
The firm pleaded guilty to three counts of breaching agreed limits on the contents of its liquid waste relating to zinc, COD and cyanide.
The judge called some of the explanations from experts brought in by Beronhill 'fanciful' with one going beyond the brief and straying into court territory.
The court heard Beronhill had failed to supply the court with a reliable set of accounts as requested. Those provided contained omissions and an unexplained swing in figures. Parts were 'incredible,' said the judge.
He fined the firm £120,000 and ordered them to pay £60,000 costs.
