Environment Minister asked to step in over claims of a smell issue at County Down harbour

Newry, Mourne and Down councillors have expressed anger amid continuing issues in the area around Warrenpoint Harbour including claims of bad smells and swarms of flies.

Hundreds of tests have been carried out by Northern Ireland Environment Agency staff but elected reps say more needs to done to address the issue.

A special meeting of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDDC) was held last week with representations made from all businesses and departments involved.

Warrenpoint Harbour Authority (WHA), brought forward an independent review on the complaints made during 2023, of an intermittent bad odour and swarms of flies in the town perceived to be coming from waste bales due to be exported to Scandinavia.

The material belonged to Newry-based waste renewal firm Re-Gen, which has provided its own independent review showing no evidence of an issue with flies and suggesting other odours from farm land and fishing boats have also been detected.

However, Independent Councillor Mark Gibbons lashed out at what he called “patronising” reports in chambers.

He said: “I am bitterly disappointed in the reports themselves. I think they are very patronising at times. The most important stakeholders of Warrenpoint are the people.

“I just think the three reports (WHA, Re-Gen and NIEA) are very wishy-washy.

“That basically, there’s nothing to be worried about, it’s only a bit of a smell and everybody should move on. It’s just shocking.

“The amount of people who have come to me about this. I have received the most complaints about this issue than any other. As an example, I was at the Wake the Giant festival with my own child, smelling it myself and I was mortified to be standing there in Warrenpoint, with the smell coming from the port, it’s not coming from the sewers or the bins.

“I can’t believe the people who compiled these reports have said the bin strikes played a part in this.”

Cllr Gibbons added that 12 members of staff at the port “contacted me privately saying that they couldn’t stand the smell and that they had regular sore heads and on the size of the flies, they couldn’t concentrate on their work”.

A council environment officer outlined how their investigation of 219 odour assessments around residential and other locations in Warrenpoint from July 2023 and March 2024 were carried out.

The officer stated that the majority of the odours detected were “faint or very faint” and did not make the threshold for being a “statutory nuisance”.

The WHA has provided a new strategy to prevent any future bad smells involving the employment of its own environment officer at the harbour.Chairperson of WHA, Dr Gerard O’Hare said the authority had “held its hands up” over the odour and that councillors who sat on the board of the harbour would be provided with regular updates of its practices going forward.

The meeting heard that Re-Gen’s independent review team had carried out a total of 173 odour surveys in residential areas around Warrenpoint with 37 detections.

The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) told the chamber that just under half of its own testing found evidence of an odour beyond the boundary of WHA. The agency said it will continue to monitor WHA with “unannounced visits” of the site.

It was further highlighted that NI Water, who were absent from the meeting, did not hold any record of material discharged into the sea.DUP councillor Henry Reilly said: “I will just point out that during that period I had received complaints from Warrenpoint residents.

“Myself and our MLA Diane Forsyth requested a meeting with the company involved and port officials, and I was very impressed with the degree of mitigation that was taking place at that time. It was pointed out to ourselves that this was majority black bin waste.

“And at that time our bin collection service was in turmoil with strikes and vehicle breakdowns, there could have been additional six weeks of fermentation taking place before it actually got to Re-Gen.

“Also, extenuating circumstances, marine transport not being available to move the stuff to Sweden for incineration. This was a commercial operation and they were trying to do their best.”

A point of information was raised by a council officer, who informed elected reps that no bin strike had taken place.

He said: “I just want to put the record straight, because there was no bin strike. There was industrial action taken short of strike and there were two work to rule.”

SDLP rep, Laura Devlin brought forward proposals to the chamber, which were then agreed.

She said: “I propose that we do write to the Environment Minister and ask him to take a look at the situation in terms of the information sharing protocol and see if there is a policy work around or some way to have redacted information going to different landowners directly.

“Also, to do with NI Water response, is really quite unacceptable, they really should have data in terms of what is being discharged into the sea. We should write to NI Water and ask them why they haven’t been collecting that data, as they clearly haven’t been and can they begin to collect to see if it is a contributing factor of what we are dealing with here at Warrenpoint.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​