YORKSHIRE Water officials are being urged to meet disgusted residents of a York suburb and explain what it is doing to tackle the ‘chronic foul stench’ from its sewage works.

Nick Case, chairman of Rawcliffe Parish Council, has spoken out about the problems at the waste water treatment works near the Rawcliffe Park&Ride site after they were highlighted in The Press earlier this week by a local resident.

He said the parish council had received complaints for many years about the chronic foul stench problems and he suspected the underlying issue was a lack of capacity and underinvestment.

He feared the problems would worsen when new homes proposed within the local plan were built and demand rose higher.

He said the council’s last meeting on Monday was well attended by many residents, ‘all of whom expressed disgust and long standing concern over the smell and surface water issues, and there was now significant demand for a public meeting with Yorkshire Water so it could identify what could be done to resolve them.

Yorkshire Water said it understood many local people would like to discuss the odour problems and its customer engagement team would shortly begin making contact with residents.

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“If there is appetite for a further opportunity to discuss the issues, we will organise a drop in session to allow people to come and talk to us about the site,” said a spokesman.

“We have found that drop in sessions are more effective than public meetings as they give more people the opportunity to speak directly to members of our team and allow for more discussion than a public meeting where only a limited number of people are able to have their say.”

He added that the company was working hard to address the current problem, having completed repairs to key equipment on site and the cleaning of the primary settlement tanks which were all now back in operation.

However, the tank cleaning work might have resulted in some short term additional odours. Further work this week should also improve matters.