A BUSINESSMAN who ran an illegal tip branded an environmental disaster was today starting an eight month jail term.

Michael Kokocinski, 54 tomorrow, continually turned his nose up at authorities over the Sansbury Quarry, Knotts Lane, Colne.

Judge Raymond Bennett told Kokocinski, described by his counsel as a "broken man," he had deliberately and continually breached the law and its requirements - and gone on regardless.

He added: "The law is to be obeyed and people must understand if they continue to breach it to suit their own ends, there can only be one end result."

Kokocinski, of Brownhill Farm, Foxstones Lane, Cliviger, admitted three counts of knowingly permitting the deposit of controlled waste, one of keeping controlled waste on land, one of keeping controlled waste on land in a manner likely to cause pollution or harm to health, two counts of knowingly permitting controlled waste to be kept on land and one of depositing controlled waste. The offences were committed between 1996 and 1998.

John Barrett, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told Burnley Crown Court how Kokocinski, whose wife was said to have bought the working tip in 1989, had no waste management licence or planning permission for landfill with waste, but ran the site as a commercial landfill business. He said: "We are aware of significant payments made to him."

There was a history of "atrition" between Kokocinski and the waste regulation authorities. He said the defendant had abused officers and shown indifference and hostility after a fire broke out in November 1997. Gas bottles exploded and firefighters and environment officers had battled to control the blaze. He said the extent and volume of the waste on the former quarry was the responsibility of Kokocinski and his wife.

The court was told a wide range of rubbish, including asbestos, had been dumped, but Kokocinski claimed much of the tipping was beyond his control and some was fly tipping.

The defendant claimed a "squatter" on the site was allowing tipping to take place for his own commercial benefit. Kokocinski alleged the Lancashire County Council or the local authority had had a "vendetta" against him in order to boost council waste sites. His skips had not been emptied on the tip, but elsewhere.

Robert Crawford, defending, said 12 years ago Kokocinski was a successful businessman, operating skips. Today he was a "broken man" and had lost his business, his home - everything he had worked for - as well as his health. He said tips were, by their very nature, unsightly, but no pollution had ever been found in the nearby stream.

He said there were "dual standards," comparing the way the defendant had been treated in the last 10-12 years with the way Lancashire County Council, the Burnley Council and other tip operators had behaved.

The county council had dumped BSE-infected cattle carcases on their site at Rowley and a "large skip firm" was this very day using an unlicensed site at Hapton.

Mr Crawford added Kokocinski was "no angel" and had tried to make a living on the fringes of the law, but felt he had been "singled out as an example.

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