Odour impact assessment for North Powys Recycling Centre

Challenge

Powys County Council announced plans to build the North Powys Recycling Centre as part of plans to increase the capacity of waste collection services in the borough.

The facility would receive domestic waste, green waste and recycling prior to bulk export for processing. Such a facility would require an Environmental Permit from Natural Resources Wales, and an area of specific concern was odour impacts upon the local community. Therefore a detailed odour impact assessment would be required to support the permit application process.

Solution

The odour impact assessment utilised detailed dispersion modelling to predict off-site odour concentrations as a result of the proposed site activities. The results of the dispersion modelling were utilised to identify the level of odour impact risk upon the surrounding community. This allowed the proposed odour mitigation measures to be assessed, and to identify whether further built-in mitigation measures were required.

Impact

The results of this assisted the client in securing an Environmental Permit for the facility by demonstrating adverse odour impact upon the community would be avoided.