A Massive Pile of Rubbish in South East London Keeps Going Up in Flames

The huge pile of burning waste at the end of Cornwall Drive

Alan Cowburn has lived on the same cul-de-sac in suburban Bromley since 1964. He has a grassy back garden, koi carp in his pond and young families for neighbours. It's all quite pleasant – the kind of idyllic provincial England that comes to mind when you think of Mary Berry and those friendly pro-hunting pubs that let you smoke inside when it's raining. But there's one undesirable element keeping the area out of the guide books: the 30,000-ton mountain of burning rubbish spewing out toxins at the end of Alan's road.

The trash heap on Cornwall Drive is a towering 40ft high and 60ft wide, and can be seen – and smelled – from a mile away. To be near it is almost suffocating; it smells like burnt plastic bags and lung disease. Breathing in the fumes for just a few hours, I felt uneasy about the chemical stink catching the back of my throat.

The pile of waste is so dense that it repeatedly self-ignites, sending plumes of toxic grey smoke into the air. Fire crews are called to the site several times a week to battle the "hotspots", and rats and foxes pillage the unsanitary waste, dragging it into residents' gardens and the nearby green belt fields.

Alan Cowburn

"Living here is a complete nightmare," says Alan. "For years it's been non-stop – 20 lorries a day bring rubbish to dump on the tip, huge dust clouds from where they roar down the road, constant plagues of flies… and the smell, especially when the weather is hot, is terrible – it even permeates the house with all the windows closed. I know that because I haven't been able to keep a door or window open for longer than five minutes in four years."

The Environment Agency (EA) has been locked in a long-running legal battle with the site operators, Waste4Fuel – a now bankrupt recycling company – over clearing the rubbish. The company rented the area of land three years ago with a licence to hold up to 5,000 tons of waste. Now, with an estimated 30,000 tonnes of rubbish sitting on the site, the EA has taken the unusual step of hiring contractors to reduce it by 2,500 tonnes, clearing it to a "safe level" and to help fire crews get better access to the dangerous, smouldering points buried deep in the rubbish.

But Alan and his neighbours think the EA's latest move is too little too late. "Why did they let it get to this stage?" Alan asks. "Two-thousand five-hundred tons won't even make a dent."

Incredibly, the EA only put a stop to Waste4Fuel accepting money from companies dumping waste on their site three weeks ago. However, their decision to intervene has brought with it the attention of the press, which residents hope will lead to something finally being done.

Alan pointing to the pile of waste through a gap in his hedge

"I went down to complain to the men working on the tip when it first got bad years ago, and they just laughed at me and told me to piss off," says Alan. "They don't give a damn about the people living here. I've been violently ill from breathing in that smell eight hours a day, and I've washed my car every day for about four years to get the dust and the rubbish off it."

Alan's not the only person to complain of illness as a result of living next to the tip. Other residents have spoken of sore throats, coughs and respiratory problems brought on by toxic fumes, and local schools have stopped allowing children out onto the playground when the rubbish pile is on fire because of health fears (burning waste in an uncontrolled space can produce harmful dioxins that have been linked to reproductive and developmental problems, and cancer).

"There was one big fire in 2011 that went on for 10 days," says Martin Peaple, who lives a couple of roads away. With a week off work, Martin has spent the last seven days "coming down, being nosy and asking questions". He says: "If the wind had blown the wrong way, that fire could have burned the whole street down. But I spoke to a fireman last week and he said the real danger will be when they start clearing big chunks of it – once they open it up, the whole thing will go up in flames."

Bromley fire station reports attending 23 "significant blazes" at the site, taking more than 2,000 man hours to put out, at a cost of around £650,000. "The fire brigade told me that whenever they're here they're pumping 4,000 litres of water a minute on to that fire," says Martin. "The EA say the water is being drained away in sewers, but we see it running in huge rivers down the road and into Ruxley fishing lake and seeping into the ground. It must be polluting all the local ecosystems and the water supply."

Martin is one of a number of local people who received an email from the EA on Wednesday evening, one week into the clearance. The email said they had removed 350 tons of waste so far, sparking doubts they will be able to meet their target of 2,500 tons by September. "When Waste4Fuel took over the site, their business idea of taking waste and recycling it was a good one," Martin says. "But it's got bigger and bigger, and snowballed until now it's totally out of control. Most people feel like it will never be cleared. At the very least it's a five-year job."

A fly trap in Malgorzata Zakret's home shows the constant "plague" residents of Cornwall Drive have had to face

House prices on the street have plummeted, with some residents claiming to have lost around £100,000 on the value of their home thanks to the tip. But this is an unexpectedly positive outcome for some – Malgorzata Zakret, who lives at 2 Cornwall Drive, tells me how she bought her house cheap just last November.

"It was a compromise. I don't want to live next to something so smelly, but it was my choice, I suppose," says the young Polish mother of one, who's pregnant with twins. "You don't expect to see huge piles of rubbish burning next to people's houses in this country."

Malgorzata says she worries about the health of her children and has to keep a constant eye on her toddler because of the consistent parade of heavy load trucks outside her door. "Being pregnant and living in a situation like this is very hard," she says. "Maybe I'm too close to it, because even when I'm not here I can smell it everywhere I go. Sometimes I think I'm obsessed by it because I'll be all the way in Orpington town and I can't escape the smell."

The smouldering heap of rubbish

The EA told me they were unable to comment on their current legal battle with Waste4Fuel. However, when I asked why they allowed the company to dump rubbish way beyond the amount their license permitted, they said: "We are required to attempt initially to bring sites that fall outside the terms of a permit into compliance by advice and guidance. It is when this fails that we look to such actions as statutory notices and then suspension and revocation of the licence. It is also at this stage that we start to gather evidence to allow consideration of other formal enforcement steps, which include prosecution."

When I asked what their plan is if Waste4Fuel can't afford to remove the rubbish, media officer Benjamin Carty replied: "The responsibility for clearing the site lies with Waste4Fuel Ltd. We are committed to working with our partners in the London Borough of Bromley to find a long-term solution. We understand the frustration of local residents and we will continue our action against Waste4Fuel."

Frustrated may be too soft a term to describe how the residents of Cornwall Drive are feeling. They're all united in the disbelief that there's any real end in sight, and for now will carry on attending regular meetings to come up with a way to pressure the EA into coming up with a more substantial plan B.

"I've lived here 40 years," says Alan. "I'm retired now, so I see it all day and all night. It's never-ending. The council should never have allowed planning permission for a rubbish tip here in the first place, right where we live, right on my doorstep."

Waste4Fuel have closed down their website and were unavailable for comment via phone or email.

@TabbyKinder / @adrianchoa

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