Jets damp down tip’s bad smells

WATER jets at work at the quarry Picture: DARREN ROBINSON

PEOPLE living near the controversial High Moor landfill site at Scouthead have given a cautious welcome to new measures designed to reduce noxious smells.

A water spray system containing an odour suppressant is now operating at the end of the tip closest to residents.

Councillor Derek Heffernan, of Austerlands, said there seemed to have been a recent reduction in smells from the site in his direction.

But it was unclear whether the odours had been stamped out in other the affected areas of Saddleworth.

A near-neighbour of the landfill site, Irene Kilroy-Power of Doctor Lane, said: “It does seem a little better but you can still smell it in Whitegate Lane.

“We have had a lot of trouble with this tip in the past and at one time we were having to report bad smells three to four times a day.

“The odour is little rotten onions and is very bad indeed.”

The chairman of Saddleworth Parish Council, Councillor Pat Lord, who lives a mile away from the tip at Springhead, said she had noticed an improvement.

She said: “In recent weeks we have only had to complain twice about smells from the tip and normally we have to phone much more often.”

Less than a year ago more than 100 people packed Delph Methodist Church to complain about the smells from High Moor.

A spokesman for the Environment Agency, which monitors the site, said that a perimeter odour system had been installed at High Moor.

It been sited on the southern boundary of the site adjacent to the nearest residents.

An odour suppressant is sprayed from nozzles along a plastic pipe and it is designed to attach itself to any odour molecules and to absorb them.

From a distance it looks like smoke but is, in fact, a fine mist of water.