A BRIERLEY Hill councillor says “she’s over the moon” to hear work has finally got underway to bring down a giant pile of waste that has overshadowed people’s homes.

The huge mountain of household rubbish, on the former Refuse Derived Fuel site in Moor Street, put Brierley Hill on the map for all the wrong reasons in 2012 when it peaked at 40-feet.

Following a series of court hearings instigated by the Environment Agency, the giant waste pile gradually started to come down but not in its entirety and it has remained a blot on the landscape.

Councillor Rachel Harris, who has been campaigning on behalf of residents living nearby who are desperate to see the back of the eyesore, said was she was “absolutely delighted” to hear preliminary works have this week got underway to start the mammoth task of clearing the site.

She told the News: “I’m really, really over the moon. I think people will just be thrilled to bits.

“We have had lots of complaints about the run off and the roads – it’s all forlorn and there’s trees growing on the site.

“There will be noise disruption and people may be perturbed by that, but that’s the price that has to be paid for getting that site cleared at long last.”

The Environment Agency says it has worked with the site owners to ensure the remaining waste is cleared without a cost to the taxpayer.

Agency chiefs had pursued legal proceedings against former RDF director Robert McNaughton, who was sentenced to six months in prison in December 2013 for failing to clear the rubbish within agreed timescales.

But Marc Lidderth, environment manager from the Environment Agency, said: “Although the court awarded in our favour, we were only able to recover £800 from Mr McNaughton despite using every legal means we have.

“We then focused our work with the landowners to look at different options to clear the waste, at no expense to the taxpayer.”

The pricetag to clear the remaining 14,000 cubic metres of waste on the site was indicated to be in the region of £750,000 last year when Dudley Council planners approved outline plans for 94 new apartments to be built on the land once it is cleared.

With workman now on site, the clearance work is expected to take around eight months.

Any residents who have environmental concerns while the work is being undertaken are urged to call the Environment Agency’s 24-hour incident hotline - 0800 80 70 60.