Spice Landfill in Tawa is just 400 metres from some residents' homes. Photo: Supplied / Porirua City Council
A nauseating smell coming from a Wellington landfill has seen Porirua City Council fined after dozens of complaints were made in just a few hours on 10 June.
Another fine was possible after further complaints were made about the Spicer Landfill in Tawa just days later.
But it was not the first time residents have complained about the stench coming from the landfill that was just 400 metres away from some people's homes.
In the year to September 2021, 148 complaints were made, and another 422 in the year to September 2022.
Almost 900 complaints have been made in the eight months to June and residents are concerned the lifespan of the landfill will be extended from 2030 to 2050 as the council planned to lodge consent for.
"They did manage to sort something out because it did go quiet for a while but it's come back in the last couple of years with a vengeance, and even worse than before." Phil Doomen
Tawa resident Phil Doomen told Nine to Noon he lived in the western hills and started noticing a bad smell about 15 years ago.
It took some time before he realised where the smell was coming from - and it has become worse in recent years.
"From what we understand, the heat of the day causes the smell to rise into the atmosphere and then as the chill, particularly in winter, as the chill occurs, it drops into the Tawa valley which is just a little bit over the hill, but it does occur in summer as well.
"So that's pretty much from 4pm in the winter as it starts to cool down, you have to make sure your windows are closed, everything is locked up and you dare not have people over to your property. It would be hugely embarrassing."
To put it simply, "it stinks", Doomen said.
Some residents exposed to the smell for long periods of time suffered from nausea and headaches, he said.
Doomen has had to fork out to get a heatpump installed so he could cool his house down in summer without needing to have the windows open.
It was about 10 years ago when Doomen realised the smell was coming from the landfill.
"They did manage to sort something out because it did go quiet for a while but it's come back in the last couple of years with a vengeance, and even worse than before."
Doomen said the landfill operated under a resource consent that had a condition that no offensive smell was to go past the boundary.
With that condition, the landfill should not be operating - but getting Greater Wellington Regional Council to issue a breach was "ridiculously hard" and there had been few despite "thousands" of complaints.
Porirua City Council water and waste manager David Down said recent complaints had categorised the smell as "sulphurous" - suggesting it was coming from landfill gas.
Down told Nine to Noon the contractor who runs the landfill had odour experts go to the site on Monday and determine there was a "great deal more" gas building up - causing the smell to move over the neighbourhood.
"It's the volume of rubbish decomposing, the fact that there is a great deal of organic matter, food waste etc and as Phil says, we've got quite a dense gas field there, a network of gas wells..."
Down said more gas wells were going to be put in to try and relieve some of the pressure from inside the ground.
He admitted that "ideally", landfills would be five kilometres away from people's homes, not the mere 400m this one was from where some Tawa residents lived.
The council had "abandoned" plans to move the site even closer, and instead, would stick to the western side when looking at further development.
"We had a spike of odour complaints about 2015/16 and at the time it was investigated and what was determined was the way that the sludge from the local wastewater treatment plant was being buried was causing an issue and odour then. So that practice was changed. Through 2017 to about 2020, odour complaints had dropped right off."
"Coincidentally", Down said, while a new cell being filled in late 2021, complaints took off again.
Greater Wellington's Long Term Plan saw the landfill open until at least 2050 and Porirua City Council would be working towards getting resource consent for that, he said.
It was still working through possible odour mitigating options, as its current use of "odour cannons" was not working.
"There is still some stuff to do," he said.
Down said a Regional Waste Management Minimisation Plan was expected to go out for public consolation in August.
In it would be the suggestion that local councils get together to discuss what they are going to do about waste - and if and where they could build a new landfill.