In 10.8.0, when I delete something from my internal boot disk, it prompts for a password. Then the item doesn't go to the trash. The trash icon in the dock remains emty.

Of course I tried to force empty the trash but the option to emty or secure empty the trash are greyed out. OSX really thinks the trash has no centent.

I realized that no space is freed up either then as I have fast turnaround of large amount of data -  THAT REALLY BECAME AN ISSUE THEN.  I could deal with entering a password every time I deleted something but now my drive is asking for space.

Tried to fix permisssions, didn't fix it.

So far I have no fix for this but a WORKAROUND...

I use Onyx. I go to the Cleaning Tab, then the Trash Tab, and execute. Only then it frees up the space. Showing me all the items that were longing to be purged and were not showing up in the dock.

Note that from my bootcamp partition, if I delete an item, it does go to the trash without password prompt and the trash functions properly except from the boot drive.