Composting smell complaints spark local councillor's policy review bid

Published on 8th November 2007 in News

East Riding Ward councillor for Howdenshire Paul Robinson is proposing a review of the agricultural composting industry as a matter of urgency at East Riding's next council meeting.

Mr Robinson wants the council to ask the Environment and Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee to review the situation, which has left many Howdenshire residents furious about obnoxious smells from the process.

Mr Robinson has said that the review should include the monitoring and regulation of the processes, especially the range of materials composted, their geographical origin, storage and the days and methods of spreading. He hopes that this will bring forward the review to look into the "diabolical situation".

He said: "Composting, if done correctly is certainly a way forward and to compost green household waste is to be welcomed as a positive step in reducing landfill, and the work being done by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council in this area is to be applauded.

"Unfortunately, the type of agricultural composting that is worrying many residents of Spaldington, Holme-on-Spalding Moor, Wressle and Brind and causing the most horrendous smells is something very different.

"This does not produce the stuff you run through your fingers when planting in the garden, but instead produces a very coarse, foul-smelling product that is spread on farmland before supposedly being ploughed in within 24 hours. The spreading of this muck is what has been causing the vile stench over Howdenshire villages recently."

He added: "I am very concerned with the risk in bringing into Howdenshire these animal by-products and commercial waste materials from other parts of the country. We are living under the threat of bird flu, blue tongue and BSE, and the recent incidences of foot and mouth only compound the situation.

"We must remember that the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth was traced back to ingredients used in pigswill, a process now banned."

Howden MP David Davis recently wrote to the Environment Agency's chief executive about allegations that the rules on composting were being routinely broken, and particularly about the pollution of a local dyke adjacent to a large 'maturation' heap of compost.

An Environment Agency investigator said the problem came from septic tanks in the village. Mr Davis said: "This remarkably incompetent judgment was so clearly wrong, in view of the local geology, that it only added to my belief that the Environment Agency do not want to get involved."