Trucks seen dumping mountain of waste for months

Joshua Eastwood owns part of the land next to the dumping site

The landowner of a site next to a mountain of fly-tipped waste has said he saw truckloads of rubbish dumped there every night for months.

The heap is up to 150m (490ft) long and 6m (20ft) high and has appeared on a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington.

Joshua Eastwood, 22, who bought the nearby land to start his own storage business, said: "It's disgusting isn't it? Especially as at the end of the day they're not going to find who did it and it's going to be us who pay for it."

The Environment Agency (EA) said it had launched a "major investigation" alongside the police to "find those responsible and bring them to justice".

Fly-tippers are thought to have been building up the mound of waste since the summer.

The rubbish itself is made up of what appears to be processed domestic waste, shredded plastics, polystyrene, tyres, and other household items.

Mr Eastwood said he reported the problem to Cherwell District Council after seeing suspicious activity.

He said: "If you were here late at night in the summer, or towards the early hours of the morning, two or three artic [lorries] would come off the carriageway from the M40, do a loop of the roundabout, pull in, dump.

"An excavator comes in, shifts it all, and then they're gone. By morning it's all over and by the time we can report it they've done another load."

He added: "You see [fly-tipping] quite often in laybys and things like that, but to this scale, you don't see that anywhere do you?

"No one's ever filled an entire field – acres' worth – of rubbish."

The Environment Agency has now put a restriction order on the land

Speaking on the Jeremy Vine show, Lesley McLean, deputy leader of the council, called the situation a "massive environmental disaster".

"For local residents this is an absolute horror story," she said.

"I can't put into words how bad this is, and though we're considered a really large village we are a close community, and there's massive concern about the contamination of the land, the River Cherwell, and the wider Thames catchment as well."

But Ms McLean said "financial and investigative responsibility do solely sit with the EA so the local council wouldn't necessarily be responsible for this in any way whatsoever".

Calum Miller, Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, asked an urgent question in the House of Commons on Monday, warning the river level had risen by about 4ft (1.2m) in recent days and some of the waste was now afloat.

The EA said after being made aware of the incident in July it took "immediate action – issuing a cease-and-desist order on the landowner".

"When the risk of further dumping by these shameless criminals emerged, we subsequently secured a court order to close the site to prevent more waste from being illegally tipped," it said.

The EA has urged anyone with information to call its 24-hour incident hotline.