A MAN who claimed he ran an environmentally friendly business washed hazardous substances into the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, turning it blue and green, a court heard.

Michael Martin, who ran the business at Albion Mill, Duckworth Street, Church, was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay £1,500 costs after he admitted several pollution offences.

Hyndburn magistrates heard he was operating a business cleaning waste from chemical drums and selling them on for companies to re-use.

Martin thought the waste was going into the sewer system and was completely unaware that it was going straight into the canal. He thought he was benefiting the environment.

But the court heard that the level of waste going into the canal was even beyond acceptable levels of waste going into sewers.

Martin pleaded guilty to treating controlled waste, discharging effluent into the canal, keeping controlled waste without a licence, failing to sign notes on the transfer of waste and carrying consignments of waste without notifying the Environment Agency.

David Holland, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, said that in August 1998, the agency received a complaint that the canal had turned a blue and green colour at Church.

Officers searched Martin's canal-bank warehouse and found between 2,000 and 3,000 drums, which had contained or still contained chemicals. Mr Holland said: "Martin had collected them with the intention of washing them out and selling them on. Unfortunately all the waste went into the Leeds and Liverpool Canal."

The drums were found to contain chemicals including phosphoric acidic waste, formic acid and concentrated nitric acid, all of which were corrosive. A hazardous chemical called rondalit was also found, along with a toxic substance called Hexacholorobenzene which has been banned in the UK since 1975 and does not rot away. Martin had been washing the drums for 21 months.

Mr Holland added: "The chemicals posed a threat to the environment and human health."

Sarah Goodchild, defending, said Martin believed he was helping the environment by recycling the drums. She said he believed the waste was going into the sewer system and not into the canal.

She added: "Although there was discharge into the canal, the fish were still alive.

"He was trying to make a living and he genuinely believed he was environmentally friendly.

"He is a scuba diver and an RSPB member and the pollution of the environment is not something he would do deliberately."

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