You may remember that we reported on Emma Downie’s work on this a few weeks ago and asked people to fill in an online calendar when they smelled the pong. Things have moved on a bit since. Emma writes:

There have been several important developments since. In very brief
summary; we have over 100 resident entries in the Milton Landfill Smell shared calendar which have been discussed with the Milton Landfill management (FCC) and (on a different occasion) submitted to the Environment Agency (EA) Officer who oversees the site. A tour of the Milton Landfill site has taken place attended by local Parish and District councillors and a Milton resident. During the tour it was apparent that the smell could
also be coming from the Household Waste Recycling Centre adjacent to the
Landfill site (managed by Amey Cespa and a different EA Officer). They are
both west of Milton so it will be difficult to distinguish the source.

Most importantly the EA now understands the scale and severity of the odour
issue in Milton and is starting investigations, but we still need your
help. The EA cannot take official action on historic reports and therefore
live reports are necessary to get to the cause of the issue.

The EA has asked that all incidents of the smell be reported directly to
them, via their manned 24/7 hotline. Each report is taken seriously and
investigated. Depending on the severity/number of reports it may trigger an
immediate inspection.

The process of reporting is simple and shouldn’t take more than a few
minutes

1. Dial EA Hotline on 0800 80 70 60, as soon as possible (but no more than 48 hrs after smell) and follow options to report an incident
2. You will be asked for your name, address and contact number
3. You will be asked for the name and address of the source. As we can’t be sure which site it is coming from we would suggest you list both: Milton Landfill Site (FCC ownership) AND Household Waste Recycling Centre (Amey Cespa ownership), Butt Lane, Milton, CB24 6DQ
4. You will be asked to rate the smell 1 – 6 (6 being the worst)
5. You will be asked for any other details, impacts on your life. We suggest you mention any feeling of unwellness, if you had to close windows, if woken up at night
6. Please make a note of your incident number.
7. We’d be grateful if you could log the incident number on the following very quick village log form found at this link tiny.cc/ponglog. This is because we need to track how many people are reporting with the EA and for confidentiality reasons it isn’t always possible for them to share this data with us. We believe community shared awareness of the issue is vital.

Your participation in reporting is crucial to improving air and odour
quality issues in the village. We thank you for your efforts. Your google
calendar participation has raised a high level concern amongst local parish
representatives and regulatory agencies.

Please keep reporting and logging!