Work to improve odour problem at landfill site has had a positive impact – councillors

Alec Doyle, local democracy reporter

Odour issues around  a controversial landfill site are improving after almost 20 years, according to councillors.

The Hafod site – which has been subject to odour complaints by residents in Johnstown, Ruabon, Ponciau and Rhostyllen for 18 years – has been under increased scrutiny after the number of complaints skyrocketed in January.

Common complaints from residents are that they cannot open their windows on warm days or that they fear what the site is releasing into the air could be harmful to people.

But a new strategy saw the formation of a new stakeholder group of residents and representatives from Wrexham County Borough Council, Natural Resources Wales – who are responsible for enforcing the site’s environmental permit – and landfill site operator Enovert.

It’s purpose was to monitor the site and ensure improvement work was carried out.

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‘Positive impact’

After six months there has already been a positive impact, according to Johnstown councillor Dave Bithell.

“What we’ve done over the last six months is put a lot of pressure on NRW and Enovert in particular to address the issues,” he said.

“Why it went wrong at the turn of the year I don’t know because it’s never been run poorly, but the last few months have been good.

“Complaints have fallen from 240 in January to seven last month so whatever has been done is working. The residents deserve that because some properties are only 100m away from the landfill site.

“Some days you go past and it smells terrible, but I went past there yesterday and couldn’t smell a thing. Credit to NRW and credit to Enovert for the work they’ve done.”

Capping

That work includes increasing capping – where mounds of waste are covered to contain odours – installing sensors in the community to measure odour releases and sharing that data in a clear, simple way with the stakeholder group.

Some campaigners remain vocal in their desire to close the site, but Cllr Hugh Jones, Lead Member for Strategic Planning and Public Protection warned that simply shutting it down would likely make the problems worse.

“Some campaigners want it closed but if you close it, what happens to it,” he said. ”

“All of a sudden all the processes that deal with the leachate and the other things that can cause smells and problems for residents stop.

“Effectively you’re left with an uncontrolled, unmanaged landfill site. That’s not good for the environment or the neighbours.

“I understand people want to see things happening but if you visit the site you’ll see there is an awful lot happening.

“There’s a lot of additional capping of waste being put in place than was happening 12 months ago. There’s additional monitoring stations in place, we’ve improved the availability and access of the data so from our point of view our public protection team are working as hard as they can to deliver on it and make the necessary information available.

“The number of complaints have dropped and dropped and bearing in mind the heat we have had recently that is a really good sign that we are getting control of the situation.”

Petition

Despite the improvements last month campaigner Steve Gittins submitted a petition to the Welsh Government asking for an inquiry into Hafod landfill.

The petitions committee agreed – a date for the inquiry is yet to be set.

The move was welcomed by Cllr Bithell.

“The Senedd committee will have their inquiry and listen and hopefully they will come up with some positive actions to support what we’ve done,” he said.

“In an ideal world we’d want it shut down because who wants to live near a landfill site? But closing a landfill site is not easy. You have to go through the environmental permit and you’d have a half-filled site you’d have to restore at some stage.”