Odours from Walley's Quarry to remain "for some time" - officials
The landfill site was told it had to permanently close last week
Odour and health issues linked to a landfill could continue ‘for some time’ despite an order to close the site, councillors have been told. The Environment Agency (EA) issued a closure notice on Walleys Quarry last week following continuing problems with hydrogen sulphide emissions affecting thousands of local residents.
But officials from the EA and the UK Health Security Agency told scrutiny committee members at Staffordshire County Council that serving of the notice was just the first stage of what could be a long process to close down and restore the site. Operator Walleys Quarry Ltd, which has said it will challenge the notice, is now barred from accepting new waste at the Silverdale landfill.
The notice also requires new gas infrastructure to be installed by Christmas Eve, while capping of the site has to be carried out by January 31 – but the full restoration of the site will take years.
Members of the county council’s health and care scrutiny committee were due to consider an independent study on the community impacts of Walleys Quarry. But since the publication of the report, the EA issued the closure notice, saying that all other options had been ‘exhausted’.
Katie Spence, from the UK Health Security Agency, welcomed the notice, but said that there would still be a need for continued monitoring of the site ‘for the foreseeable future’. She said: “The closure notice, although we absolutely welcome that, is not a situation that means that we are going to see all odour being prevented. That is a really important point. Clearly now we’re going to be going through a process of understanding what this next stage looks like, and what the consequences will be for odour and the local population.
“We would expect the monitoring to continue and for that information to be shared with us on an ongoing basis. That is something we would envisage should be in place for the foreseeable future. So potentially it is a positive next step, but certainly not a next step that suggests we are in a resolved position from a health point of view.”
Committee members said that the public wanted to see tangible improvements to the situation at Walleys Quarry as soon as possible, with some questioning why the closure notice had not been issued earlier.
Councillor Steven Norman said: “How many breaches does it take to get a quarry closed? How many times do you let them say they’ll try better next week or next month? There are health impacts, but there needs to be some follow-up to this, and perhaps some responsibility for the lack of action over the last number of years.”
Andrew Hitchings, national incidents manager at the EA, said the agency had to work within the regulatory framework. He also explained that while the gas infrastructure and capping would have an impact on hydrogen sulphide emissions, Walleys Quarry Ltd would be required to manage the site in line with its permit ‘for some considerable time’.
Mr Hitchings said: “We certainly understand that the community and this committee would like to see the outcome of the closure notice come sooner, but our actions have always got to be in line with the regulatory framework. A closure notice is not a decision to take lightly. It can only be used when all other regulatory options have been exhausted.
“The EA’s preferred outcome would have been for the operator to have got the odour and hydrogen sulphide under control in a sustainable and sustained way.
A lot of effort was put into that by the EA – over 180 regulatory interventions – but we have come to the point where we have concluded that it is not going to be successful, and the only way to achieve the outcome is for us to issue a closure notice. That has come because we believe the site operation is poor, and continued operation will result in significant long-term pollution.”
Members of the committee welcomed the community impact study on Walleys Quarry, carried out by consultants from Arcadis, which looked at the effects of the landfill site on health, house prices and the local economy. The report made a number of recommendations, including further investigation of public health impacts and better communications.
Committee chair Richard Cox said: “The message from this committee is that we are watching. Because it is clear that there is an impact on our residents.”