FORMER waste company boss Anthony Small has been ordered to pay £13,500 in fines and costs for failing to remove thousands of tonnes of waste from a site near Newton Abbot.

The case was brought by the Environment Agency.

Mr Small, of St Mary's Park, Collaton St Mary, Stoke Gabriel, pleaded guilty at Exeter Crown Court on Monday to illegally storing 700 tonnes of controlled waste at Ruby Farm, Abbotskerswell, between July 30 and August 8, 2008.

He was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £3,500 costs.

Mr Small was a co-director of Ruby Waste Management Ltd, Ruby Farm, Abbotskerswell, where the company operated a waste transfer station and recycling facility at the site that had previously been a landfill.

At its height, Ruby Farm was one of the biggest waste transfer stations in the area handling around 45,000 tonnes of waste a year.

The Environment Agency served a notice on Ruby Waste Management Ltd requiring the company to remove a large pile of illegally deposited 'fines' from an adjacent field by August 1, 2008.

These fines, made up of shredded and sieved inert and non-hazardous waste, had been causing water pollution and odour problems.

Mr Small told the Environment Agency that disposal of the waste fines was under way and that they were being removed to the landfill site at Heathfield.

But when agency officers returned to Ruby Farm they found that the fines had simply been moved to the waste transfer station.

A volumetric survey of waste stored on the transfer station showed there were 6,490 cubic metres of waste fines being stored at the site on August 1, 2008 – more than 20 times above the permitted limit.

'The amount of material stored at Ruby Farm grossly exceeded what was allowed under the permit for this site and had the potential to cause further pollution.

'The defendant had ample opportunity to remove and safely dispose of this waste, but chose to ignore the advice he received and exhibited an obstructive and dismissive attitude towards authorities.

'We were left with no choice other than to prosecute', said Richard Cloke, for the Environment Agency.

Last November, site owner and co-director Frederick Charles Down was fined £25,000 for the same offence.

He pleaded guilty at South Devon Magistrates at Newton Abbot to two charges of breaching his environmental permit and a third charge of failing to comply with an enforcement notice.

Three identical charges against his wife, Ann Down, were dropped.

Ruby Waste Management Lt went into liquidation and ceased trading in 2009.