New conditions have been placed on the licence of a green waste facility at Kembla Grange after it was pinged as the likely source of a smell that has generated more than 120 complaints to the environmental regulator.
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On Thursday the Environmental Protection Authority ordered Soilco to employ a consultant to come up with ideas for controlling smell at its Kembla Grange Organics Recycling Facility facility.
The site has been accepting green waste and Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) matter since 2013.
Regulators assessed the impact of odours at the Reddalls Road site in June 2019, basing this on odour sampling from similar facilities that handled food and FOGO waste.
But in November 2020 the site began accepting significantly more organic material, after Wollongong council gave a FOGO bin to every household in the local government area and introduced a kerbside collection service.
The authority received more than 85 complaints between November and January. Farmborough Heights residents contacted by the Mercury likened the smell to something "really, really dead" and "a wet chook pen". Several residents said the smell was putting the kibosh on everyday activities like outdoor walks, barbecues and opening the windows.
Throughout February, the EPA logged another 45 resident complaints.
A spokesman for the EPA said the authority was continuing to carry out odour surveys in the area and was acting on every complaint it received.
"The site-specific studies are a critical step in determining which processes at local facilities are contributing to the odour," he said.
"EPA officers record details such as time, weather conditions, wind speed and direction to build a profile of the odour issue. After gathering information from the complainant locations, EPA officers survey the Kembla Grange facilities to match odour characteristics obtained from the residential area."
According to a variation to Soilco's licence, published on the authority's website on Thursday: "the EPA has completed a number of inspections of facilities within the Kembla Grange precinct including the [Soilco] premises ... and based on this, the EPA suspects that the odour emissions from the premises exceed those predicted".
Soilco is required to engage a consultant to carry out assessments and "recommend actions to improve environmental controls and reduce odorous emissions from the activities undertaken on the premises".
Soilco is required to provide a final report to the EPA by April 30. The EPA spokesman said it was "a potential offence" for a facility to generate an offensive odour.
"The EPA remains focused on resolving odour impacts in the community, and will consider whether there have been breaches of legislation by operators in the Kembla Grange area when more definitive information is available."
Wollongong's Food Organics and Garden Organics service, introduced November 16, has been credited with diverting massive quantities of greenhouse gas-emitting food scraps from landfill and into the Soilco plant. The material is chopped into small pieces then spends 10 days inside heat and air-controlled storage bunkers, then is moved to a composting facility to "mature outdoors" for several weeks, before it is sent to retailers and wholesalers in the form of bagged compost.
The EPA encourages calls to its Enviro Line on 131 555.
Angela Thompson
Proudly Illawarra Mercury since 2008; these days covering crime and justice issues. UOW alum. Thrilled by the chase and sobered by some of the things I see and hear when I stand still - sometimes in the same day. ang.thompson@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Proudly Illawarra Mercury since 2008; these days covering crime and justice issues. UOW alum. Thrilled by the chase and sobered by some of the things I see and hear when I stand still - sometimes in the same day. ang.thompson@austcommunitymedia.com.au
