The Council has introduced a rigorous monitoring regime to respond to complaints about Scottish Water’s £24 million investment in Seafield waste treatment plant.
The scheme will look at reducing the odour nuisance around the Seafield area.
The Scottish Code of Practice highlights the waste operator’s responsibilities and provides the backbone to Council enforcement.
A one year monitoring and improvement plan which started on 1 June will see a pool of 18 council officers specifically trained and able respond quickly to any complaints about smell from the plant and investigate them thoroughly.
All the officers have received specific training on monitoring methods, sources of the odour and types of odour and will enter the plant to investigate the specific source or cause of any odour problem.
Any lapses in the management of the plant or breaches of the Code of Practice will result in a warning letter to Scottish Water and consistent breaches could result in a formal enforcement notice being issued and any failure to comply will result in a report to the Procurator Fiscal.
Ten locations to monitor any smells have been chosen based on recorded complaints.
Officers will record how often there is a smell, the extent of the smell and how long it lasts.
The Council is keen to work closely with local communities and work is ongoing to identify ways to include residents in the monitoring process. This includes, asking the public to help by filling in a simple survey form.
The support from the public will help the Council identify any patterns or changes and challenge any breaches to the Code of Conduct and enforce the Odour Improvement Plan.
Cllr Robert Aldridge, Environment Leader said,
“We are going to work with the community to take firm action to make sure the money spent by Scottish Water will make a real difference to reducing the smell around Seafield. We can make sure that the plant is managed to the highest standards and that community concerns are addressed. Around 3,000 households in the area surrounding Seafield will be contacted to explain our plans and invited to take part in our smell check”.
Extra effort will be made around times where local weather conditions or planned maintenance of the plant might mean that odour might affect the community.
The 12 month assessment period is 1 June 2011 to 31 May 2012.
Odour assessment includes
- Type of odour
- Strength of odour
- Persistence
- Frequency
- Wind direction
- Other weather conditions
- Proximity to works site boundary
Monitoring points will include
- East Restalrig Terrace
- Restalrig Road
- Claremont Gardens
- Prospect Bank Road
- Pirniefield Gardens
- Seafield Avenue
- Claremont Park
- Eastern general new housing site
- Craigentinny Avenue North
- Restalrig Crescent
The Scottish Code of Practice highlights the following “It is the intention to provide statutory controls, obligation and standards by placing a duty on Scottish Water ….to control and minimise odour and a requirement on local authority regulators to monitor and enforce operators’ compliance.”
The public can contact the Council on public.health@edinburgh.gov.uk or phone 200 2000 where the staff will be able to contact a trained officer to investigate the complaint as quickly as possible.
Scottish Water have this to say about the project to improve the odour control at Seafield:-
The Odour Improvement Plan approved by City of Edinburgh Council involves the delivery of significant capital works at the Seafield WWTW, aimed at building on the investment already made at the treatment plant, targeting those areas of the plant that contribute the most to odour emissions from the site.
What we’re doing
There are two main areas to the Seafield Odour Improvement Project:
Odour improvement work
This covers areas of the plant that represent the primary sources of odour, extracting the air, treating the air using a number of Odour Control Units (OCUs), and finally discharging the cleaned air through stacks.
Preliminary treatment improvement works
This is a significant upgrade to preliminary treatment works, that remove much of the debris and grit as the sewage flows enter the plant, which would otherwise reduce the performance of the plant downstream (including the potential to produce odour).
This work is needed to improve the ability of the inlet works to cope with the much larger quantities of debris that are transferred to the plant during the “first flush” in heavy rain or storm conditions.
Diagram from the Scottish Water website.
