City tippers are 'out
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• Cowboy operators are making a killing by illegally dumping builders' waste from London's booming Dockland construction sites — and environment chiefs are warning that the problem is out of control.
The fly-by-night drivers, often using unlicensed trucks, take the rubbish through the Thames Blackwall Tunnel and dump it in playing fields, side streets and verges in neighbouring boroughs. Greenwich council says that clearing the mess will cost its ratepayers over £100,000 this year.
The drivers undercut legitimate operators by offering low rates, and can earn thousands of pounds a week. They use two-way radios and strong-arm tactics to escape council enforcement officers — vehicles being used to trap fly-tippers have been rammed.
Now legitimate operators and councils are demanding a clamp-down on the cowboy tippers and on building companies who do not care where their rubbish ends up. They want lorry owners, as well as drivers, made responsible for illegal dumping.
As legal tips in London become harder to find the prob lern will get worse, predicts Keith Cartwright, transport manager of A & J Bull, one of the capital's largest building and waste disposal hauliers. The company is fighting to compete with cowboys who keep prices artificially low.
"A lot of building contractors don't give a damn where their rubbish goes — and we're talking household names," he says. The company, which runs 150 tippers in London, uses sites near Heathrow and in north Kent, but sometimes has to go as far afield as Bedford.
The capital's environmental watchdog, the London Waste Regulation Authority, wants rules forcing all tipper operators to display names, addresses and phone numbers on their vehicles. It says it is tightening up the tipping regulations, but admits that it is often impossible to prosecute illegal dumpers: "We must catch them in the act, but it only takes most of them 30 seconds to get rid of their load. If we clamp down in one area, they move to another part," said an LWRA spokesman.
Many fly-tipping vehicles have false licences and plates. "The licence of a 32-tormer could actually be for an old lady's moped in Dorset, picked at random from the phone book," claims the LWRA.
London operator Eddie Sheridan, who run seven tippers, says many small hauliers are getting caught between large companies, which control many of the legal dumps, and the private operators who deliberately flout the law.
"Unless you work for the bigger companies you are charged £50 to tip a load of muck when you only get paid £90 for a load. With overheads and paying drivers there is an incentive to fly-tip. I don't condone it, and we don't do it, but