Father and son get suspended sentences after 10,000 tonnes of waste found buried in Ballymena

Gerald Bryson McCarroll (69) and 38-year old Brian McCarroll, of Doury Road in the Co Antrim town, were each given six months in prison, suspended for one year.

The offences relate to the unauthorised keeping of controlled waste at a site co-owned by the elder McCarroll on Doury Road.

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) stated the organisation’s officials found “significant quantities of buried waste” on the site on September 6, 2018.

The material, said the spokesman, consisted of construction and demolition waste such as clay, concrete, brick and timber, together with other waste called trommel fines.

Trommel fines are minute pieces of construction material such as metals, plastics, glass, textiles, glass and ceramics, which need to be tested for hazardous contaminants and usually go to licensed landfill sites.

The NIEA estimated that there was over 10,000 tonnes of waste buried in the site. Samples of the waste showed that it was actively polluting the land, and the property was not licensed to keep or treat controlled waste.

Both men pleaded guilty during a court hearing in 2023 and undertook to clean up the site, excavating, treating and removing of the most polluting material from the site. Information provided by the defendants showed that approximately 1,200 tonnes of trommel fines, 13 and a half tonnes of hazardous waste and five tonnes of polluting leachate – liquid formed when water comes into contact with a body of waste – that was removed from the site and disposed of at an authorised landfill facility.

Those works, which were overseen by the NIEA, were completed in September 2024 and cost an estimated £400,000, a spokesman for the body said.

Added the spokesman: “This represents a significant positive outcome, insofar as the law has been upheld and convictions secured. However, importantly, the polluting waste has also been removed at the expense of the defendants. This means that the environment has been protected without significant cost to the taxpayer.”

Each man pleaded guilty to keeping controlled waste on land without a licence. At Antrim Crown Court today, the defendants were instructed to pay costs to the NIEA of over £3,500.