A WASTE company from Marlborough has been fined more than £40,000 after concerns over chemicals.

Hills Waste Solutions Limited, formerly Hills Minerals and Waste Limited, runs a landfill site which receives non-hazardous household waste at Compton Bassett near Calne.

Pollution controls said that the company had to carefully control the amount of chemical leachate which built up at the site and devise a plan to cope with an emergency.

Leachate develops from decomposing waste and is a potentially polluting liquid.

The liquid can contain heavy metals such as arsenic, cyanide and oils and because of that waste site operators are expected to keep carefully controlled management of such sites.

The liquid has to be removed and then treated on site before being transferred to a water treatment plant operated by Wessex Water.

But on November 2, 2006 the Environment Agency found the company was failing to monitor leachate levels and did not act on an emergency leachate management plan, as required by the site's PPC permit.

An investigation suggested that between January 1, 2005 and September 31, 2006 Hills Waste failed to provide a number of monitoring results for leachate.

During this time there were numerous breaches of leachate levels, up to 10 times greater than that allowed under the sites permit.

The levels of leachate were far in excess of those permitted.

The company also failed to use tankers to reduce excessive amounts of leachate as required in the emergency leachate plan for the site.

Chris Povey for the Environment Agency said the company's actions represented a failure to respond to a situation which had the potential to cause pollution of the environment.

Hills, of Ailesbury Court, High Street, was fined £40,800 with £7,000 costs after pleading guilty to four offences under the Pollution Preventon and Control Act 1999.