Residents in a part of Napier say a stench from factories close by is so bad they can not open their windows or put clothes on their washing lines.
The turnoff to Awatoto in Napier - a suburb known for its mix of industrial odours and odd smells. Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin
Awatoto is an industrial seaside suburb south of the city, where a small pocket of houses are dwarfed by giant factories.
Resident Tania Thomson could not do things many people take for granted.
"I've been here about five years and I don't use my clothes line any more 'cause it's not nice. Your clothes end up smelling like the air," she said.
"Sometimes it can smell like old cows, other times it smells like poo."
She said there was hardly any fresh air around.
"We can't leave our windows open depending on which way the wind's blowing. It's been like that for as long as I can remember."
Down the road, resident Jarrin Bennie feared opening the windows too.
"You open the front windows on the house and the wind's blowing the right way it blows inside the house so you can't open the front windows, it's not the best really," he said.
Neither are some people who travel past this area happy, as it is by one of the main roads from Hastings to Napier.
RNZ rang every business in the Awatoto area we could get hold of.
The main culprits most businesses blamed were the huge Ravensdown fertiliser plant, BioRich Compost and rendering plant Hawke's Bay Protein.
Ravensdown's Napier manager Andrew Torrens said it was the neighbours.
"While our Napier manufacturing site sits on State Highway 51 quite visibly, a lot of what you're smelling isn't actually attributable to Ravensdown or our manufacturing process."
BioRich's Mike Glazebrook admitted his business could emit odours, but had not had a complaint in several years.
"Managing odour is a big challenge. Bio Rich's approach is to acknowledge that and address it and find solutions... the compost is made over airlines, there's caps put on top of the compost piles to make sure we don't blow odour out of the fresh material."
Hawke's Bay Protein - who was prosecuted for odour just last year - did not respond to a request for comment.
Residents were also a bit worried about a new player in town and feared the odour could get worse.
Pet food company Ziwi is opening its new factory in Awatoto. The first products have come off the line this week and the factory is hoping to be at full capacity early next year.
It was leaving Tauranga, partly because the residents there were so over the smell.
But managing director Richard Lawrence said the smell would not be a problem in Napier.
"What we've put in is a $5 million custom-built air-treatment facility. There will be no air treatment facility like this in the pet industry in Australasia so we're extremely proud of it."
The local enforcer is Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
Its enforcement and compliance team leader Mike Signal would not name any culprits when it came to the smell.
"We don't assume who's producing the odour until staff are on site and we'll go to where the smell is detected and then we'll trace the source of the odour down and carry out assessments of whether it's obnoxious or offensive."
*The Hawke's Bay Pollution Hotline can be reached on 0800 108 838 24/7.
