"The stench permeates the clothes and stays inside the vehicles" explain the workers of the companies in the Hortes de Mataró estate due to the constant episodes of pestilence caused by the Maresme Waste Treatment Consortium. "We can't even open the windows in the summer", the workers find the situation untenable. "Breathing this force daily, for years, must be harmful to health" they warn, and in this sense, they remember that at the end of 2021 dioxin emissions have already been exceeded.
"It's a very uncomfortable situation to receive international clients in these conditions" they say from one of the multinationals, which provides a timeline with fifty episodes reported in writing since 2018. As if the force was not enough , they add that sometimes "we have to endure a persistent whistle that makes one go crazy" they say. All these facts have been reported repeatedly to the nature protection service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard, which at all times "has taken note".
"These are all good words, but the stench persists", maintain the businessmen contacted by this newspaper, so that "after repeatedly complaining to us since 2018" they are considering raising the case to the Environmental Prosecutor's Office" so that it leads to carry out an investigation. "We tried with the City Council, with no response", they regret, while the complaints to the Generalitat's Environment "continue to be investigated". They have even come to detect "swarms of bees on the ground, unable to fly, they don't die, but they are stunned by the stench of the incinerator".
Already in 2019, an evaluation report of the olfactometric controls in the vicinity of the center, drawn up by a specialized company, detected constant exceedances and non-compliance in the industrial and urban areas of Mataró. Based on the IMO professional assessment criteria (odour nuisance index), critical days of stench that even exceeded the category of "intolerable" were pointed out repeatedly.
The Department of the Environment of the Generalitat claims to be "aware of this problem", but indicates that the regulatory competence lies with the town councils. However, to reassure the residents, they point out that in the last inspections by Acció Climàtica "atmospheric emissions in the area have been satisfactory".
For its part, the Waste Agency of Catalonia maintains periodic controls and inspections at the treatment plant. The Mataró City Council, whose mayor, David Bote, is also president of the Waste Consortium, instead transfers the responsibility for controls to the Generalitat. The municipal government has limited itself to diplomatically acknowledging that it has received complaints from a company "out of shame", and to give an answer it will require the consortium "information on the measures they are taking due to the problem".
The consortium assures that they are aware of this impact of the plant, which is caused "by the biomethanization treatment of the organic matter" that comes from the residual fraction. In this sense, they describe that every year they treat 100,000 tons of organic matter from the gray containers of Maresme and Vallès Oriental. "It's an issue that worries us" and that's why they say that an action plan is being implemented to install new deodorization systems.
