Category Archives: Impact Assessment

Independent Review of Planning Documents – St Albans

Independent Review of Planning Documents – St Albans

We have recently been offered a small job by St Albans Council to look over a Planning Application, and provide steering on likely Environmental Impacts to the development.

The situation is quite unusual in that the a housing development was being assessed on the basis of proposed impacts from a large mineral working & landfill scheme, that had not yet commenced. 

The mineral working (quarry) scheme in question had been approved by environmental permitting, but planning permission was still pending at the time of our review.

We reviewed the extensive Environmental Impact Assessment that had been submitted in support of the Quarry & Landfill Application.

We made review of the following Environmental Impact Assessment chapters:

  • Noise Impact
  • Dust Impact 

We also recommended for further assessment in following areas:

  •  Bio Aerosol
  • Odour 

The main benefit to the local populace was the restriction of the sites operating hour to standard business hours.

Bio Aerosol and Dust risks typically fall away quite quickly at a distance of 250m from source, as the housing site was within 250 meters of the proposed quarry and landfill we recommended further assessment in these areas.

Odour Impact Assessment – Salisbury – Wiltshire

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.