North Essex: You can stop these blots on landscape (From Gazette)

North Essex: You can stop these blots on landscape

9:05am Tuesday 1st April 2008 in Video By Tom Parkes

Waste chiefs today called on residents to stand up and be counted in the fight to stop fly-tipping from blighting the countryside.

Scenes like this, captured at the weekend in picturesque Chalkney Wood, near Great Tey, have become an all-too-familiar sight for dog-walkers and nature-lovers across Essex.

Council bosses have a witness to the incident and are on the trail of the offenders, but in thousands of other cases every year, tippers go unpunished.

On the Wivenhoe Trail near the Hythe in Colchester yesterday, a heap of bulky household rubbish lay on grass beside the River Colne, while two bikes had been thrown in the river.

Residents in Chequers Road, Little Bromley, were recently left with a bill for £3,000 to clear up dumped asbestos.

Colchester Council bosses had to stage a huge clean-up just before Christmas to get rid of a mountain of waste in garages at St Luke's Close, St John's.

Chris Kitcher, acting head of environmental services at Tendring Council, today led calls for more help from the public to catch fly-tippers, who cost taxpayers a small fortune in clean-up fees.

He said: "A lot of the times, people will ring up and tell us about incidents, but are not prepared to give evidence.

"If you are relying on evidence from a witness, you need to be able to present that evidence in court, and there is a responsibility on all of us as citizens to do that."

A spokesman for Braintree Council, which is responsible for cleaning up the rubbish in Chalkney Wood, said: "We have received evidence from a witness and we are investigating."

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