COUNCILLORS at Warrington are to decide this week whether a waste disposal company can carry on using a controversial landfill site until 2016.
Members of the borough council’s development management committee have been to inspect the site, off Moss Side Lane, Rixton to see for themselves the operation which has been annoying local residents for years.
Collier Industrial Waste is seeking planning consent to use the site for tipping for another five years and then a further year for restoration work.
Nearby residents and Rixton-with-Glazebrook Parish Council have lodged objections.
Householders claim they have to endure smells, fumes, vermin, noise, flooding and a loss of visual amenity.
They say the tipping has damaged the Green Belt, involved the loss of farm land and results in 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.
Planning officers 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 newts within the site would be safeguarded.
