Interpretation of landfill operation instructions by Regional Environmental Protection Authority may not be arbitrary – Supreme Administrative Court overturns unfavorable verdict of Warsaw Administrative Court determining the daily rate of ongoing fine
The lawyers of the Environmental Protection Practice at Andersen in Poland had the judgment of the Warsaw Administrative Court (WSA) overturned by the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA). The judgment dismissed a complaint against the decision of the Chief Environmental Inspection Authority upholding the decision of the Regional Environmental Inspection Authority of Dolnośląskie Province on the amount of the daily rate of ongoing fine for breaching the decision approving the landfill operation instruction as regards the type and manner of waste storage.
The case began in 2018. In the course of an inspection (following a request filed by Andersen’s Client to close one of the landfill’s quarters), inspectors of the Regional Environmental Inspection Authority of Dolnośląskie allegedly identified a non-compliance with the decision approving the landfill’s operating instructions.
The bone of contention between the landfill manager and the regional authority was the method of arranging sectors (vertically vs. horizontally) of the last (top) layer of the landfill.
According to the landfill management instructions, waste should be stored in two sectors, A and B, each of which should hold waste of strictly defined codes. The landfill manager stacked sectors A and B in each layer of the landfill vertically, however, in the final layer, once the waste to be stored in sector A had been depleted, the manager formed sector B only, spreading it horizontally across the entire top layer. The Environmental Inspection Authority of Dolnośląskie considered this arrangement unacceptable because, even though the waste intended for sector A had been exhausted, the manager should have formed both sectors (i.e. A and B) in the final layer. The Authority considered this practice to violate the decision approving the instructions for managing the landfill.
The main reason why the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) overturned the judgment of the Warsaw Administrative Court (WSA) was that the Court of First Instance prepared a statement of reasons that did not meet the requirements set out in Article 141 §4 of the Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts. This was primarily because the WSA disregarded or made laconic reference to the numerous and elaborate complaints filed.
The NSA also included certain guidelines on the merits of the case in its judgment, indicating that ‘the general statements referring to the division of quarter I into sectors A and B in the wording of the instruction in no way settle the issue of the obligation to delimit and maintain the two sectors throughout the landfill’s existence, or to ensure equal areas and geometries of the sectors’. These general statements derived from the instructions influenced the decisions made by the Environmental Inspection Authority of Dolnośląskie and the Chief Environmental Inspection Authority, and were subsequently repeated in the reasons for the judgment issued by the Court of First Instance.
Thus, the above ruling by the NSA means that environmental inspection authorities cannot interpret landfill site maintenance instructions arbitrarily. The NSA’s ruling enables Andersen to take legal action to overturn the environmental inspection authorities’ decisions on determining the daily rate of ongoing fine, which is the first step in imposing the final ongoing fine (currently amounting to several million zlotys).
The case was handled by:
Dawid Mielcarski, advocate, Partner at Andersen in Poland
Klaudia Raczek, advocate, Manager at Andersen in Poland