LONDON (AP) — A mountain of illegally dumped trash near a river in the country outside Oxford was visible from space but few on Earth seemed to notice the mess.
Hidden behind a thick row of trees from the busy highway next to it, the pile grew to the length of three Olympic-sized swimming pools and reached up to the roof of a two-story house as motorists unknowingly sped past.
How the garbage got there and how long the massive pile had been growing remains a mystery, but its recent discovery has caused an outcry about a brewing environmental crisis and drawn attention to England’s uphill battle to tackle criminal gangs suspected of illegally dumping waste.
“How they managed to escape the eyes is quite shocking,” said Liz Gyekye of Thames 21, an environmental charity. “Let’s hope that these perpetrators are caught swiftly and punished for their crimes. This is an environmental catastrophe unfolding at the doorstep of one of our nation’s most treasured rivers.”
With winter rains coming and the trash sitting in a floodplain, there are concerns it will be swept into the adjacent River Cherwell, which meanders downstream through the Oxford University campus before meeting the River Thames that eventually flows to London and then out to sea.
Criminal investigation underway
Although it was only reported in the news last week, the Environment Agency in England said it identified the area as a high-risk illegal waste site after becoming aware of it in July and issued a cease-and-desist order. The agency obtained a court order last month to shut down the area after learning about the continued dumping, which is now being investigated as a crime.
When the dumping began is unclear, but satellite footage obtained by Thames21 showed verdant fields in April 2024 and what appeared to be a whiteish streak of the garbage between two rows of trees in July this year.
Weeks before the public became aware of the dump alongside the A34 highway near the village of Kidlington, the government came under fire from a Parliamentary committee for being slow to act on a problem the agency said costs England’s economy 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) annually.
Enough garbage is illegally dumped each year to fill the 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium 35 times, the Environment and Climate Change Committee in the House of Lords said in a recent report. The committee urged the government to get tough on the organized crime groups suspected to be behind the problem.
“Despite the scale and seriousness of the crimes, raised by the members of the public in many cases, we have found multiple failings by the Environment Agency and other agencies, from slow responses to repeated public reports (as in the case of Hoads Wood, Kent) through to a woeful lack of successful convictions,” said Shaista Ahmad Sheehan, the committee chair.
A problem that has become widespread
The scourge of everything from bags of household waste to appliances and furniture being dumped in cities and countryside is a growing problem.
“Fly-tipping,” as it’s known in the U.K., is a combination of the word for dumping while doing it on the fly, often from a moving vehicle. The practice is a source of angst for landowners and local government and an eyesore for a nation proud of its natural beauty.
Anti-litter advocates Keep Britain Tidy said government figures showed there were more than 1.1 million fly-tipping incidents from the 2023-24 year, up 6% rise from the previous year.
Often conducted by fly-by-night operators offering to haul away unwanted junk for a cut-rate fee in unmarked vans or trucks, it’s a difficult crime to stop and can be expensive to clean up for landowners responsible if it ends up on their property.
“No fly-tipping” signs abound in secluded urban areas and along country lanes where examples scattered or piled along roadside brush are not uncommon.
Colossal mountains of rubbish dumped by organized groups operating dump trucks pose a much bigger challenge.
Cleanup could cost a fortune
The identity of the person who owns the field where the dump in Oxfordshire was found has not been publicly identified, but the cost of the cleanup could exceed the annual 26 million pound ($34 million) budget of the Cherwell District Council, according to Calum Miller, a Liberal Democrat who represents the area in Parliament.
Miller posted video of the shredded plastic towering over him.
“I’m deeply concerned that the Environment Agency is not equipped to deal with this unfolding environmental disaster,” he said Monday in the House of Commons as he called on the government to clean up the “obscene” eyesore, which has been done with other large-scale dumps.
In June, the Environment Agency began overseeing a lengthy cleanup of a similarly giant dump in Hoads Wood, a protected ancient woodland south of London in Kent. Rogue haulers cleared trees there in 2023 and spent six months dumping 30,000 metric tons (33,069 tons) of household and construction debris up to 4.5 meters (15 feet) high.
Three men have been arrested in that investigation but no one has been charged. The agency said it shut down 743 illegal waste sites in the 2024-25 year, including 143 considered high risk.
Environment Minister Emma Hardy said she couldn’t divulge much about the incident because of the ongoing investigation, but she defended the agency Monday.
The government has increased waste enforcement funding by 50% after a freeze by the previous administration, she said.
“The government is aware of the appalling case of illegal dumping,” Hardy said in response to Miller’s comments about the Oxfordshire dump. “I absolutely share his constituents’ anger as I too have seen the photographs and videos and it is no wonder that he feels moved to bring this urgent question today.”
