Sewage Treatment Sites (Hansard, 26 November 1984)

§ Mr. Roy Galley (Halifax)
The debate results from some serious problems of nuisance from odours in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson). We are both deeply concerned about the continuation, and in some aspects exacerbation, of these difficult local problems. However, these local difficulties have considerable significance and impinge upon national policy.
The problems relate to the Halifax sewage works, which are a complex of sites at Salterhebble, North Dean and Copley. For many years local residents have complained about the emission of foul odours from those sewage treatment works. All such sites inevitably present problems of smell for local residents, and with modern planning controls there would perhaps normally be fewer houses in the vicinity of sewage sites, although the experience of some hon. Members may suggest that that may be an optimistic view of the situation and that the planning controls may, indeed, be inadequate. Nevertheless, the houses in the area exist and the smell persists. It is very difficult to measure smell, but I can assure my hon. Friend the Minister that it is regular and foul in varying degrees in this area of Halifax and of the Calder Valley constituency.
Initially, the odours in the Copley area were attributed to the manufacture of two humus-based products which were produced after a drying process. They were, first, Organifax, and then a slightly different product, Yorkshire Bounty.
In the mid-1970s a series of measures were taken to mask the odours, such as spraying scented chemicals in the vicinity, but those steps did not overcome the smell. In the late 1970s the production of this humus was discontinued because it was not a commercial success. Yorkshire water authority officials at the time indicated that this would overcome the worst of the odour emission, but it has proved not to be the case.
The latest suggestion is that the odours may stem from the need to treat effluents which come from several food and drink manufacturing plants in the Halifax area. It is maintained that such effluents can upset the digestion process at the sewage treatment works. However, there are many parts of the country where such effluents exist and foul odour emission does not present a problem. I understand that intermediate treatment stations can be installed, and that has been done successfully at Tadcaster, where there are three major breweries. That plant includes an odour control plant, and the problem of odour nuisance in Tadcaster has been completely eradicated. Alternatively, at Burton-on-Trent, sewage is treated by an anaerobic digestion process which, apparently, does not produce problems of smell or of slurry disposal.
Businesses pay for admitting trade effluent to sewers, and that payment is made on a sliding scale according to the strength of the effluent. It is therefore in the interests of the businesses concerned to reduce effluent strength, and indeed one such local firm, a famous brewery, has recently spent over £250,000 in an attempt to reduce effluent strengths and thus reduce its annual effluent charges. The water authority takes regular samples of 756 effluent strength, and that brewery has shown a 35 per cent. reduction in solid content over a 12-month period. There has also been a reduction in the amount of oxygen present, which in turn makes a more balanced effluent.
Major steps have been taken by firms in the constituency to reduce the strength of odour. Nevertheless, the smell persists in the vicinity of Copley and North Dean. There is no firm evidence presented by the Yorkshire water authority that the problem results from brewery and food manufacturing waste.
In addition to that problem, which has persisted for many years in the Copley area, we also have local problems of sludge dumping and processing. The process at the sewage treatment sites in Halifax results in a pressed cake which requires disposal. It can be spread directly on farmland, but in turn it produces serious odour problems, especially when it is near residential development.
It was therefore decided by the Yorkshire water authority to compost the material centrally before spreading. The current method which it employs to deal with sewage disposal is by mechanical pressing, lime is then added, and the cake is composted after transfer to another site. Supposedly, that process reduces the smell, but there continues to be a considerable foul odour, particularly at premises near where the sewage is processed at Lowfields in Elland, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley. That is a relatively new problem, in addition to the problems that we have had for many years in the Copley area. That process began in the summer of 1983, and it takes place within a quarter of a mile of several residences.
Given the will by all concerned, these problems can surely be solved. In many respects the Yorkshire water authority is doing a good job for people in Calderdale at present. We have long-standing problems of water quality, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Calder valley and others have campaigned over several years. The authority, to give it credit, is making substantial progress in improving water quality by investment in new plant in Halifax and relining a large number of mains.
While the latest spate of problems has existed at Lowfields for the last 18 months, the authority has sought from time to time to ameliorate the problem. This summer there was a serious infestation of flies at Lowfields. The authority acted promptly with the use of pesticides, and the problem was resolved. It has also installed new capital equipment to ensure the adequate mixing of lime with the pressed cake, but that has not dealt with the smell with which the people of Lowfields have to cope.
Despite the number of small measures that I have outlined, both at Copley and Lowfields, the water authority has not been fully successful. It must do better, because there is an indisputable and long-standing nuisance from foul odours in those areas.
My hon. Friend the Minister is the expert in these matters. It would not be appropriate for a layman such as myself to offer solutions. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend could explain his policy on odour reduction and the processing of pressed cake. Investment in the form of intermediate treatment plants might solve the odour emission from the sewage treatment works near Copley and North Dean. Tankering to remote agricultural areas might solve the sludge disposal aspect.

§ Mr. Donald Thompson (Lords Commissioner to the Treasury)
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Galley
The installation of a digestion process where the pressed cake would be left in tanks to digest further might be preferable to the present activated sludge process operated by the Yorkshire water authority. I understand that the water authority considered such a scheme, which would have required some further capital investment, but that it has recently, for some inexplicable reason, deleted the scheme from its capital programme. My constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley have suffered the problem for far too long.

§ Mr. Thompson
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Galley
It is not only a matter of personal suffering. We are seeking to promote our area as being suitable for further business investment. What encouragement is it to potential investors when, as they enter Calderdale from the M62, they are hit by noxious odours from our local sewage treatment sites?
I know that my hon. Friend cannot direct the Yorkshire water authority to take any particular action. Nevertheless, he should take note of the suffering of my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley and give us some guidance in resolving the problem. Furthermore, the people of Halifax and Elland should be able to look to the water authority to take much more positive action to deal with the noxious odours once and for all.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Neil Macfarlane)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Galley) on raising a matter which is clearly of importance to his constituents in Halifax. It is, of course, of equal concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson), who has also raised the matter in the past. Because of his current role, my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley has to maintain a semi-Trappist silence on some issues, but the House will have heard his vigorous sedentary interventions this evening.
Both my hon. Friends have a considerable problem in helping their constituents to try to handle the misery which undoubtedly affects many people living in that part of the country.
I have looked into the history of the affair, and I hope that it will help my hon. Friend if I put the present problem into perspective.
The sewage treatment works at Halifax are on three sites — Copley, North Dean and Stainland road. The plant was being reconstructed and extended by the Halifax county borough council in 1974, when the Yorkshire water authority was formed and took over the works. Most of the installation has performed satisfactorily since it was commissioned, but there have been serious operational problems. Nobody should underestimate that. The intention was that the sewage sludge should be heat-dried and sold as fertiliser. But this process proved too expensive to run. There have also been problems in controlling odour from the original heat treatment unit.
Accordingly, in 1979 and 1980, the water authority shut down the heat conditioning unit and the final drying plant. This left it with a problem of disposing of the sewage sludge.
The geography of the area makes it impracticable to dispose of liquid sludge on farmland and therefore the use 758 of anaerobic digestion to stabilise the sludge at Halifax — which produces an inoffensive liquid fertiliser —would not be economic. Early in 1982 experiments were begun to determine whether the sludge could be effectively stabilised by the addition of lime, a process which is in successful use elsewhere. Although the Halifax sludge is particularly difficult to stabilise in this way — mainly because of the brewery and confectionery wastes from which it is derived—initial results proved promising.
Full-scale use of lime mixing was introduced in the spring of 1983, after some delay caused by the strike of manual workers, and the treated sludge cake was transported to the Lowfields site for temporary storage. This has been a matter of interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley which he has pursued with the local authority and my Department. This temporary storage is essential for several reasons. First, there is no room on the site of the sludge pressing plant and, secondly, land spreading operations have to be organised on a seasonal basis to suit farm management practice. In addition, it is recognised that for sludge to be disposed safely to grassland, it must be substantially free from pathogens. It has been found that if the limed Halifax sludge is composted by stacking in the open for several months, it is made pathogen-free and odour nuisance is further reduced.
The site at Lowfields has a long history of use for sewage disposal. It was formerly the sewage treatment works of the Elland urban district council and therefore has planning permission and is accepted for this type of use. This makes it relatively suitable as a composting area for sludge cake.
Operation of the new method of composting after lime treatment during the summer of 1983 was very ecouraging and complaints of odour nuisance where the treated cake was used on pasture land were much reduced in number. The problem was not eliminated, however, and in February this year a petition about the odours was received by the mayor of Calderdale. A subsequent visit of inspection to the Lowfields composting site by environmental health officers impressed them with its effectiveness in reducing odours.
While this method of treating the odour problem by lime dosing and composting has now been shown to be feasible. The authority has not yet completed the capital works necessary to ensure adequate mixing of the lime with the de-watered sludge. Meanwhile, the odour problem has persisted at Lowfields and, on occasion, at Copley. The hot dry weather this summer exacerbated the problem and also caused a plague of flies, which, however, was quickly tackled by the use of spray pesticides, but not before it caused much misery to the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley.
In summary, complaints of foul odours from the three Halifax sewage treatment works go back for 10 years or more. The water authority attempted to mask the odours in the early days. With the abandonment, in 1979 and 1980, of the drying process, which enabled it to dispose of the sewage sludge as a fertiliser, it was left with problems of sludge disposal to which the technical solution — lime treatment — has emerged only quite recently. Even now, this process is open to improvement and is being improved through the capital works which the water authority is now undertaking.
759 Meanwhile, there have been odour problems, particularly at the Lowfields site where the limed sludge is stored to compost, and at Copley, particularly during the hot dry weather this summer when flies also gave grounds for complaint, though the authority attacked the flies successfully with pesticides. It is to be hoped that the technical measures which the authority has taken will soon be fully effective, and forestall the odour and the repetition next year of fly nuisance.
There has been a regular dialogue between the authority and the district council about the difficult operational problems of the Halifax works. Consultation began as early as the summer of 1975, during the reconstruction work, when there were complaints about noise and smell, resulting in a public open day at the site to demonstrate what was being done. After the commissioning of the new heat treatment plant in 1976 there were further discussions to try to resolve the smell problem and work was put in hand on the development of improvements.
However, by 1980 the environmental problems had still not been satisfactorily solved and the authority decided to cease what was by then an obviously uneconomic operation. Throughout these negotiations and discussions the district council has been fully appreciative of the real difficulties facing the authority and has acted in a practical spirit of constructive co-operation. It is clear to me, too, that the authority and its chairman have been sensitive to the representations made by the Calderdale district council, the public, and Members of Parliament and are making every effort to overcome the problems which have proved to he particularly intractable. My hon. Friend hinted that there is also a longer-term issue. The Calderdale district council has expressed interest in acquiring the site at Lowfields, which was formerly the sewage treatment works of the Elland urban district council, and which, after a period of disuse, is now used for the composting of sewage sludge transported there, after lime treatment and de-watering at the Halifax sewage works.
The Yorkshire water authority has been prepared to discuss the transfer of this site to the Calderdale district council, but it could relinquish it only if an alternative site was available for the operations now undertaken at Lowfields.
The authority hopes that the district council, as planning authority, can help. I need not emphasise the importance that any site used for sewage treatment an sludge composting operations should have the necessary 760 planning consent for that use. I know that the Yorkshire water authority is ready to discuss this matter further with the district council and others involved. But the problems that have arisen in this debate are essentially local, as my hon. Friend has hinted, and I hope that with continuing effort and good will they can be resolved between the local public bodies concerned. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has very limited powers in this matter. In the remote possibility of an appeal arising under the Town and Country Planning Acts, he is in no position to play any constructive part in resolving these issues immediately.
Nevertheless, I hope that the efforts that are now being made, and the investment that is now being put in, will abate the nuisance, and that the public bodies concerned can reach agreement on any better pattern of land ownership and use that might be found.
My hon. Friend referred to the district council's invitation to the Secretary of State, in a letter of 1 November, to be represented at a meeting with the borough council and the local Member of Parliament. Unhappily, that letter was misdirected and went astray. I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate that as our legal advice is that we have no particular locus in an essentially local matter, we are advising the borough council that we have no part to play in resolving the issue and that it should continue to press it with the Yorkshire water authority direct.
I thank my hon. Friend far raising this important subject tonight. His constituents have every reason to be grateful to him for the efforts he is making on their behalf arid on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley.
I know that my hon. Friend is well aware of the division of responsibilities in this area, and, while my Department will naturally do what it can to help the Yorkshire water authority, we understand that its locus and role are paramount. I am sure that both my hon. Friends the Members for Halifax and for Calder Valley will continue to intercede with the authority on their constituents' behalf. I am certain that the resourcefulness which my hon. Friend has displayed tonight will ensure that copies of Hansard are sent to the Yorkshire water authority so that it can understand the depth of his feeling and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley.