Environment Agency Wales has taken action against a composting site in Gelligaer after smells coming from it worsened.
The amount of food waste entering Bryn Compost in Gelligaer will be significantly reduced as the odour problems continue to cause problems for the local community.
Following a meeting with Agency officers, the site operator has agreed to voluntarily cut food waste arriving on site.
Officers have also insisted that the compost remain indoors while it ‘stabilises’ – the most odorous part of the process. The action follows an intensive eight week assessment of the odour problems coming from the site by officers in the local community.
Mair Davies, of Environment Agency Wales, said: “Despite the many improvements we have insisted on to the composting process at the site in the past 18 months, the situation has deteriorated.
“One of the main causes of odour is the length of time the compost is kept indoors. Increasing this should mean a much better quality of life for those living near the site.
“We will continue to investigate how much of an improvement these changes have and if the result is not good enough we will take further action.”
Caerphilly AM Jeff Cuthbert has welcomed the Environment Agency’s intervention.
He said: “I’m very pleased that the Environment Agency has taken this step. Local residents have suffered severely for several years and it is right that the EA has finally recognised their plight.
“But it’s very important that the EA continues to monitor the site closely and that local residents continue to report incidents.
“The EA must be prepared to take further action, including suspending operations, if these new measures don’t work.”
A spokesman for Bryn Compost said: “We’ve made many improvements at the site over the last 18 months, but more recently complaints have begun to increase, particularly when we’ve been treating food waste.
“After discussions with the Environment Agency on a way forward, we voluntarily decided to significantly reduce the amount of food waste we process. This will unfortunately mean that jobs will be lost from the site as our workload and income will fall dramatically.
“Until we can implement a permanent solution to the odour emanating from the site, it is likely the waste which would have been treated here will be disposed of in a landfill site at significant extra financial and environmental cost.
“We are in the process of appealing the decision which the council made last year to turn down our planning application, which would have let us enclose the composting facilities within a building – reducing both the composting and farm smells.
“We are hopeful that the planning inspector will see the decision to enclose the facilities will provide us with a long-term solution for the site’s future.”