Posted on 09/23/2023 11:23:53 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Residents say they've had to put up with foul smells in their village for years and they feel ignored
People living beside a farm turned sustainable waste disposal plant and sandstone quarry claim the smell from the huge site is so foul they can’t sell their houses and sometimes can’t open their windows. Residents in Gelligaer in Caerphilly say they’ve been beset with issues for 20 years as a result of the work.
The Bryn Group - owned by the Price family who have been at the site formerly known as Gelliargwellt Uchaf farm for five generations - tells of how a former family-run farm has grown into a massive 350-hectare eco-friendly waste management operation which sells renewable power. It has diversified so much that as well as its herd of 720 Holstein Friesian cows, it now employs more than 100 people at its base which offers a recycling service, composting, turns food waste into renewable electricity and fertiliser and produces sandstone at its quarry for road surfaces. One of its many big customers is Caerphilly County Borough Council, which also regulates the group’s operations. While residents beside them say they don’t begrudge the Price family for diversifying their business so successfully, they are frustrated that they have to put up with what they say is a “constant stench 365 days a year”. While they re-established a liaison group between themselves and the Bryn site earlier this year, locals maintain they “don’t get an inch” in their conversations with the company and the council, and continue to feel ignored.
Sherry Spencer, 72, who has lived in Gelligaer all her life, claims the blasts from the quarry to create sandstone have caused cracks in her home, while the smell from the plant has prevented her from selling up. For the latest Caerphilly news, sign up to our newsletter here.
Since 2016 the group has used an anaerobic digester to turn food waste delivered by local councils into “food soup” which is blended with faeces and urine from the cattle on the site and turned into electricity, which residents have often blamed for the smell. A second anaerobic digester has also recently been commissioned and will soon also be used on the site. But the Bryn Group insists that the digesting process does not smell.
A spokesperson for the Bryn Group told WalesOnline: "The cows eat a lot of sileage, which we grow on our farm, and produce a large amount of slurry, which we process on-site along with food waste from across Caerphilly in our anaerobic digester. We have taken significant measures to manage the cattle slurry, such as improving rainwater management. This keeps the clean rainwater separate from slurry to reduce the overall volume of slurry the farm is producing.
NerdWallet California: Do This Instead Of Going To Your Bank For A Mortgage Weight Watchers WeightWatchers is for people who want results without restrictions by TaboolaSponsored Links "The recent warm spell coincided with our latest sileage harvest. Part of that process is to spread digestate biofertiliser on the land, which takes about seven to ten days solid work. Just like spreading raw slurry to fertilise, which farmers have done for centuries, digestate biofertiliser gives off an odour when it is spread.
"We know that odours and activity associated with our dairy farm are often incorrectly attributed to the recycling facility and anaerobic digester we have on site. The food recycling operation has never been served with any kind of enforcement notice and, as a sealed system, emits no odours from the point at which food is delivered until the end-product, called digestate, is spread on local farmland and fields as biofertiliser. Even then, research shows that digestate biofertiliser has a lower odour profile than raw cattle slurry and the odour dissipates much more quickly."
But locals say the group’s eco-friendly use of the land has made living there a “nightmare” and that Gelligaer, with a population of almost 20,000, was never going to be a suitable spot to house a waste management plant.
“It isn't a typical farming smell,” Ms Spencer, former secretary of the liaison group, claimed. “We’ve been surrounded by farms here for more than a century and we’ve never had smells like we have now. It’s like a sulphurous smell, like acid has gone up your nose. Other times it’s like there’s a public toilet in your back garden.
“The smell now is as bad as ever. Last week was awful. You can phone and phone but nothing ever gets done about it. They say they rarely get complaints anymore but it’s because people have got so fed up with phoning. People have lost hope. After 20 years of complaining we haven’t got an inch. In the end I retired as secretary of the liaison group because the group wasn’t making a difference.
“I put my house up for sale because I’m diabetic and I fell down the stairs, so I needed to downsize. I had three people one day come and see the house and the village was absolutely stinking. Everyone that visited knew it wasn’t a typical farm smell. It’s absolutely disgusting.
“Every person who came here asked me about the smell. I was embarrassed but I couldn’t lie to them and sell them my house under false pretences. In the end they all turned me down, so I’m struggling on in this house and I’ve paid a fortune to try and get it modified. Then there is the blasting too. The whole house shakes. The dogs panic and come running in the house because they can feel the ground going. I’ve had to have the doors refitted four times because of it. There are cracks in my walls and on the front of my house.”
A Bryn Group spokesperson added that the group blasts at the quarry 15 times a year, and said it isn't possible that the blasts would cause damage to properties. They said: "The aggregate is extracted from the quarry by carefully designed blasting, which reduces the vibrations and need for heavy processing drills. We blast around 15 times each year, and each blast is monitored to ensure readings are well within the safe levels. Our blasts are always significantly below the level at which structural or cosmetic damage can be caused. We have heard the occasional protester say they cannot sell their homes, and yet there is a healthy housing market in the villages around Gelliargwellt Uchaf."
Mark Roberts, 62, who has also lived in Gelligaer all his life, said: “It’s not a farming smell. It’s like acid. In the nice weather in the evenings we’d like to open the bifold doors, but we can’t because of how bad the smell gets. They call it smelly Gelligaer now. And we’re not talking once in a while - we’re talking a constant stench 365 days a year.
“We’ve got a meeting with the liaison group coming up in October, and I’m sure they’ll probably say they’ve only received a couple of complaints. Maybe I believe them, because people have stopped complaining because nothing ever gets done. It’s so disheartening.”
The Bryn Group recently had a two-year extension approved to continue blasting at the quarry. At the planning committee meeting in March councillors were told by council officers that it would be better to grant planning permission so the council could “control” the site through conditions. Caerphilly council officers said a refusal could lead to an appeal, which could take around 18 months, and in the meantime work could continue at the site.
Since operations at the quarry and waste management site began, residents, particularly living in Nelson where large lorries access the Bryn site via the main Shingrig Road, have also complained of noise, dust pollution, foul smells and congestion, all of which they claim is caused by the lorries. Gill Davies, 83, who has lived in her home in Nelson for 54 years, said: “Nelson has often been ignored in conversations around the site but I’m always aghast at how many lorries are coming through our village to the site. When they started it it was small. Then they decided they’d have the anaerobic digesters there.
“We don’t have so much of the smell now as opposed to what those poor people up there in Gelligaer have. What we have is the trouble with the number of lorries coming through here. The roads are very narrow. Shingrig Road there often can’t cope with it with all the cars parked on either side of the road too. The lorries are incredibly huge and they get bigger and bigger. In the time I'm down there for three quarters of an hour while waiting for the bus I've seen at least six lorries pass. It’s a danger to my village.”
A spokesman for Caerphilly council said: “The various operations on this site are subject to ongoing monitoring by the council, NRW and other partner agencies. We are aware of concerns from the surrounding community and a liaison group has been established to improve local engagement and provide a platform for community representatives to raise and discuss such issues. All complaints received by the council are recorded and logged so that officers from the relevant section can investigate if appropriate. We will continue to work with the operator, the community and our partner agencies to address any concerns as they arise.”
Hefin David, MS for Caerphilly, said: "I am in regular touch with the residents of Gelligaer and the agencies involved, to try and mitigate the effects the Bryn site is having on residents. I recently managed to get the liaison group reinstated and bring residents face to face with Bryn Group, as well as the local authority and NRW who are responsible for regulating the work going on at the site. I will continue to support and represent residents in these meetings, as long as they want me to."
Ehhh. It could be worse. They could be living in San Francisco.
Sh!tty place.
Or it could be raining
There are places in Pennsylvania where the mushroom farms are that stink badly of fertilizer. It smells like rotting fish everywhere. The locals are used to it.
Sell the village.
Keep the house.
“Constant stench 365 days a year”
Sounds like a good definition of the dims
Well recycling is just a newer word for Garbage , the same garbage trucks pick it up
Borderites
Lol, reading the canned responses from the quarry’s spokesperson reminded me of Nathan Thurm...
You are describing Giorgi Mushroom Co in Blandon PA. Traveling on route 222, you can smell the awful stench as far away as Moselem Springs. I don’t know how people can live near that place unless they enjoy the smell of rotting flesh.
But it stated in the article that it also smells like sulphur.
That is the only smell that the human nose can not become accustomed to.
Every other odor the human nose can ignore once you get used to smelling it.
https://www.fairborndailyherald.com/2023/09/21/bath-township-biodigester-to-permanently-shut-down/
Just this week…. Ohio , Bath township
We lived south of small town on an acreage with wells & septic systems. The town had city water piped in & septic too. About 20 years ago, the federal government came in and made the city get rid of all septic and all sewage went to open pits. We’d drive by there on the way home and the smell on a hot, humid day would just linger in the air. Couple years later, the Missouri River floods destroyed the pit & they had to rebuild.
If you’ve ever been to the United Kingdom / Britain / England, this is not a surprising revelation. Many parts still live in the 1800s. ‘Tis a silly place.
LOL! You guessed it!!
Could it be the “New Welsh” being imported by the millions?
Living the green dream
But it stated in the article that it also smells like sulphur.
That is the only smell that the human nose can not become accustomed to.
.........................
I didn’t know that. Hell will be hellish.
They need to add charcoal to their digesters.
It could even be made from the solids left at the end of the digestive process. With the right setup, they could harness more electricity while burning the solids into charcoal.
Once added to the slurry, charcoal has an amazing ability to absorb those odor-causing compounds responsible for the stench.
It doesn’t take much of it, either. A quart of charcoal per 100 gallons of slurry might be enough, although the exact ratio would require some testing.
I’ve had experience using charcoal to deal with the odor from livestock. My dad designed a chicken coop that was absolutely horrendous. The top was open mesh, and the bottom was solid wood. Raid poured in, mixed with the manure, then had no way to drain off. He refused to listen to even the slightest hint that his design was less than perfect. After several days of rain alternating with 95+ degree heat, it got bad enough it was hard to step outside! I snuck about a quart of lump charcoal in there, and within a few hours the smell had improved considerably. By the next day the smell was gone.
It amazes me that charcoal isn’t used more often!
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