Odour Impact Assessment – Salisbury – Wiltshire
Acting on instruction from a client in Southwest Environmental Limited are to prepare an Odour Impact Assessment in connection with a proposed development in close proximity to a to a Sewage Treatment Works.
Odours from sewage treatment works can be created in numerous ways they can come from stockpiled materials, aeration areas, or digester which are sometime incorporated.We have seen some smells from sewage treatment works come from malfunctioning equipment. Ironically the very equipment that was installed to take away smells / odour.
Typically an odour impact assessment is not carried out based on direct “smells” that we for example might sniff upon visiting a site. Instead they are conducted using reference values, perhaps from other sewage treatment works.
We take these values and feed them in to a model which is very complicated, and factors in weather, and when and where smells (odour) will be generated. The model then spits out a number, if it is higher than 3 then that is bad, if it is lower than 3 then all is well.