Man who discarded a hard drive with $500 million worth of Bitcoin files a lawsuit against the local government to search the landfill.

Over the past decade, a man from Wales has been pleading with his city’s government for permission to access the contents of the local landfill. James Howells, a 39-year-old resident of Newport, has been fervently requesting this as in 2013, he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 7500 bitcoins in the trash. Due to the soaring value of the cryptocurrency over the past decade, the value of those assets would now be over half a billion dollars.

Unfortunately for Howells, the Newport City Council repeatedly rejected his requests. Lawmakers argued that delving deep into the landfill could violate regulations and potentially cause significant harm to the surrounding environment.

Now, in an attempt to force the local government to fulfill his desires, Howells has filed a lawsuit against the council, demanding compensation of £495,314,800, according to Wales Online reports. The amount he is seeking is approximately equivalent to what he would have earned if he had kept the encrypted hard drive. Howells informed the local outlet that he does not actually want this money from the council and is just trying to compel them to allow the excavation to proceed.

This is just the latest in an increasingly desperate (and perhaps costly) effort to retrieve the hard drive. The Register reported that over the past ten years, “Howells left his job in IT and assembled a team of investors” who, like him, would be able to split the majority of the assets if found. At the same time, Howells plans to retain approximately 30% of its value.

Gizmodo reached out to the Newport City Council for comment. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Howells claimed that he would share a certain percentage of the hard drive profits with the local community if recovered. In fact, Howells made somewhat joking claims about the missed opportunity by Newport lawmakers in rejecting his request to clean up the landfill. Howells told Wales Online seemingly: “If you spoke to me in 2013, [that landfill] would be like Vegas now.” “Newport would look like Dubai. That’s the kind of opportunity missed.” Whether other local residents of Newport – who already consider their city a somewhat bustling urban community – really want it to resemble Las Vegas remains unclear.

In a statement provided to The Register, the council stated that it “informed Mr. Howells several times that excavating is not possible under our environmental permit and this type of work would have a significant negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.” They added: “The council is the only authority empowered to carry out operations at the site.”

It is noteworthy the amount of money Howells has spent on this seemingly futile quest. After all, the hard drive could be A) forever lost and/or B) completely damaged and unusable. If so, Howells would have wasted years of his life and a considerable amount of change for nothing. At the same time, if Howells somehow manages to lay his hands on his preferred hard drive and if his encrypted assets are somehow in a recoverable format, he would never have to work again – hence you can understand his enthusiasm for the matter.