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3.8 Senator B.E. Shenton of the Minister for Transport and Technical Services regarding assurance of the closure of the Composting Facility at La Collette:
Would the Minister give the residents of Havre des Pas his personal assurance that the Composting Facility at La Collette will be closed if members of the public suffer unreasonable discomfort from smells and other irritants over the coming months?
Deputy G.W.J. De Faye (Minister for Transport and Technical Services):
The terms of this question poses a number of issues not least of which is in fact what constitutes unreasonable discomfort and who decides what unreasonable discomfort is likely to be? Similarly, it is my understanding that not all smells emanate from the Composting Facility. It seems fairly clear that there are also smells arising from decomposing seaweed as well as dying-off marine algae, therefore I regret that I cannot give a personal assurance that the composting facility at La Collette will be closed in the event of an odour emanating from the plant in the coming months.
However, I can assure the Senator that the Technical Services staff will be giving their usual efforts to ensure that any problems are reduced to the minimum. But I would like just to take this moment to say how delighted I am that those staff last week won an award from Jersey Genuine Produce for the best new product for the soil improver that is produced by our highly green organic Composting Facility. Can I can give an assurance to the Senator - and I know he visited the facility yesterday
morning - that the staff down there work very hard indeed, and in a conscientious way I might add, to ensure that all the problems with odour emanating from the Composting Facility are kept to the absolute minimum.
3.8.1 Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:
Would the Minister confirm that this marvellous award attributed to the Department and wholly supported by people that are into the environment, like myself, was for the 20 per cent of the composting that occurs to that stage, the other 80 per cent is not graded as such.
Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:
I am delighted to see the Deputy was paying close attention on his tour of the composting facility yesterday. Yes, it is absolutely correct: 80 per cent of the composting goes straight back - in a slightly more raw form - on to agricultural fields in the Island and 20 per cent - which is a slightly finer graded product - constitutes the award-winning soil improver product.