The site was officially opened earlier this month to treat residual waste on behalf of the Partnership which is made up of Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire councils (see letsrecycle.com story). Much of the waste currently comes from Bristol, whose collection contractor is SITA UK.
But, over the last two weeks, local businesses have been complaining that their premises have been infested by flies originating from the New Earth site.
To tackle the problem, New Earth has been carrying out routine fly fogging and been working closely with the Environment Agency to reduce the fly numbers. It has also been in direct contact with those businesses concerned to reassure them about these mitigation measures.
However, a spokesman for the Environment Agencys South West office told letsrecycle.com today (September 26) that the problem seemed to originate from vehicles entering the site rather than a problem at the site itself. It has consequently asked New Earth to spray all vehicles which come onto the premises with insecticide and is investigating whether the time it takes for waste to be delivered to the site could be reduced.
We are aware that there has been a fly problem at the New Earth Solutions facility at Avonmouth for the last couple of weeks. We have not received any complaints directly but we have had some referred to us by Bristol city council who have had a few, the spokesman explained.
We are talking to that company and the problem seems to be that the flies are coming in with the waste its not something they are doing on site. So we have asked them to increase the use of insecticide to reduce the problem.
The waste is being moved between transfer stations before it goes there. We are also looking to see if they can reduce the time it takes and give the flies less time to develop in situ.
A spokeswoman for Bristol city council confirmed that the West of England Partnership had agreed to carry out an investigation with the Environment Agency into its waste transfer stations to see if anything could be improved, but stressed that the council did not yet know if any changes would be necessary.
She said: We have agreed with the Environment Agency to carry out an investigation.
New Earth
New Earth Solutions said thatit has been told by theEnvironment Agency that it was happy with all the mitigation measures put in place to tackle the fly problem.
A company spokeswoman said: In the last two weeks we have noticed an unusually significant increase in fly activity. We are aware that local businesses have also experienced this increased activity and have been in direct contact with them to provide reassurance as to the control measures employed by New Earth.
There are a number of waste management facilities in the Avonmouth area and problems with flies are common at this time of year. At our facility we are undertaking professional fly fogging, or knockdowns, using an external specialist contractor. This control measure is highly effective and is being undertaken on a daily basis to control flies within our boundaries. We are also working with the operators of waste transfer stations that supply some of the waste coming into our facility to ensure that it is delivered in a timely fashion. This helps reduce the fly population developing within the waste, which can migrate from vehicles as they travel.
New Earth said that it would continue to work with the Environment Agency to ensure that the facility was operated in accordance with best practice and all applicable legislation.
The Environment Agency spokesman added: New Earth has a waste permit from us and they are not in breach of that at the moment. We are trying to resolve the problem so that it does not impact on local people.
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