Visitors to York's new £2.5 million Rawcliffe Bar Park & Ride may turn their noses up when they open their car doors.

For they look set to catch a nasty whiff of sewage from an adjacent Yorkshire Water sewage treatment works - at least when the prevailing south-westerly winds are blowing.

The pong may also prove a bit of a deterrent for anyone thinking of stopping for a picnic at a nature reserve, which is also being created nearby. Work on constructing the Park & Ride site - located just off the A19 and York Outer Ring Road at Rawcliffe - is nearing completion, and the facility is set to open next month, ahead of schedule.

So after hearing disturbing reports about the stink in the area, the Evening Press decided it was time to check out the smell for itself.

Our reporter drove to the area, wound down his car window ... and quickly wound it up again. It certainly seemed a far-from-fragrant welcome to our fair city for visitors from the north - although it wasn't perhaps in the same league as the larger sewage treatment works near Naburn.

Roy Templeman, director of environment and development services at City of York Council, said today the authority was aware of the problem and officers had asked Yorkshire Water if it could take any steps to reduce the odour.

He said the request had been made not just because of the new Park & Ride but also because of intermittent complaints from residents in the area.

The adjacent country park was located some distance from the waste treatment works and would not be affected so much.

He added that the opening of the Park & Ride project, which was given the go-ahead by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in November 1998, after being bitterly opposed by some local residents, had been brought forward to next month from the spring after work progressed more quickly than anticipated.

Yorkshire Water said today it had always opposed the plans to site the Park & Ride next to the sewage treatment works, which handles waste from Rawcliffe, Skelton, Clifton Without, Huntington and New Earswick.

In response to past complaints about odours, the company last year installed some new state-of-the-art odour control equipment which was performing very well.

"But with the best will and technology in the world, if you stand right next to a sewage treatment works you are bound, on occasions, to be able to detect some smells - unfortunately it's the nature of the product we are handling.

"That's why we, as a company, now oppose any application to build within a 400-metre radius of our sewage treatment works."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.