A company accused of illegally operating industrial equipment is said to have taken the battle to the Supreme Court.

But company owner Paul Rodrigues denied any knowledge of the appeal and said he was not involved in any court case.

Permanent Secretary of the Environment Brian Rowlinson said Rodrigues Trucking appealed to the Supreme Court after both the Environmental Authority and the Minister of the Environment rejected applications for permits to operate a sand sifter and a rock crusher at the Devonshire Marsh.

Controversy has plagued the company's work at the site since 2001, when Planning officials claimed dumping at the site had encroached onto agricultural land.

A stop notice was served, but Mr. Rodrigues said at the time that the notice was wrongly worded because it banned him from dumping on agricultural land, while he claimed he was only dumping on industrial land.

A report by the Environment Ministry released to almost a year ago called the dumping "one of the most blatant examples of environmental destruction ever encountered in Bermuda", while a Letter to the Editor from several environmental conservation groups, including the National Trust and the Bermuda Audubon Society, labelled it "the worst current example of zoning abuse in Bermuda, with the potential loss of at least two acres of significant wetland agricultural grazing land".

Last week Planning Director Rudolph Hollis said Mr. Rodrigues had received permission for restoration work which he was supposed to be conducting, adding that his Department had met with Mr. Rodrigues several weeks ago to learn how much rubble there was on the arable land and how he planned to remove it.

There was an Environmental Conservation Officer at the meeting, he said. Planning is not involved with the Supreme Court equipment dispute between Mr. Rodrigues and the Environment Ministry, he added, being concerned only with the encroachment onto arable land.

Mr. Rowlinson said he would only speak to the facts of the court case.

The company had applied for and obtained three-month operating licences for the sand sifter and rock crusher, he said ? licences which expired in August of last year.

Though the company applied to the Environmental Authority to get the licences renewed, the application was turned down on the grounds that the company had failed to operated the machinery within the hours specified in the original licence.

A later appeal to the Environment Minister was also turned down in December, and the company's lawyer has since lodged an appeal in the Supreme Court, Mr. Rowlinson said.

Mr. Rodrigues, however, denied he was involved in any such court case when contacted by last week.

"I can't speak to anything I don't know about," he said.