PLANNING bosses at Warrington are to carry out a site inspection before deciding if a waste disposal company can carry on using a controversial landfill site for another six years.
Members of the borough council’s development management committee will visit the site off Moss Side Lane and Moat Lane, Rixton.
Strong objections have been made to the proposal by site operator Collier Industrial Waste who have been tipping on the site for many years.
Nearby residents say they are fed up with having to endure smells, fumes, vermin, noise, flooding and loss of visual amenity.
Rixton-with-Glazebrook Parish Council and borough councillor Bill Brinksman have also lodged objections.
Other reasons for objecting include damage to the Green Belt, loss of farm land and increased heavy traffic on local roads.
Tipping has been carried out in the area since the 1940s and planning consent for the current site – originally two adjoining sites – dates back to 1996.
If the new proposals went ahead, tipping would continue until 2016 and the company would then require another year to restore and landscape the area.
Planning officers are recommending the scheme be approved.
They say there will be no increase in the amount of tipping as raising levels in one part of the site will be compensated for by reduced levels in another.
Although increased levels will have an impact, the site is already a dominant feature in the area and a rise of some three metres will not make any significant difference.
A report to Warrington’s development management committee indicates there is potential for the site to have an impact on the Rixton Clay Pits, a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its population of Great Crested Newts.
But the applicants are proposing a pre-development mitigation scheme in which they would trap the newts and relocate them to ensure the habitat and population of Great Crested Newts within the site would be safeguarded.
