Southern Water’s Peel Common Wastewater Treatment Works at Fareham in Hampshire is on course for the lowest recorded number of complaints about smells at the site.

An environmentally friendly project that uses only natural elements such as bark, wood chip, seaweed and seashells lining water-filled tanks, is proving to be a solution to smells. 

Feasting bugs live on seaweed and wood in tanks which treat the hydrogen sulphide gas that causes smells. The gas is sucked away by fans before going through carbon filters and into the atmosphere.

In the seashell tanks the system contains an odour filter filled with the shells which are constantly washed by a pumped system. The shells develop a biological film and this film neutralizes the gases further helped by the calcium present in the seashells. An activated carbon filter then “polishes up” the air.

An Odour Forum, formed by residents and councillors in the area, described Southern Water’s new green solution as “fantastic.”

Southern Water Process Scientists are always looking for new ways to benefit the environment and therefore will always urge the report of any similar problems directly to the  24 hour Southern Water’s  Technical Call Centre on 0845 278 0845.  Such reports will instigate an immediate site investigation to help decide where it will be best to implement any further odour solutions.