The very active Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand (CASANZ) organized an online webinar on the three new guidances that are about to be released on several aspects of odour management. These three guidances are being developed by EPA Victoria, Australia and on this occasion, the odour expert and EPA Victoria officer Chris Bydder was the one in charge of this talk. This interesting webinar took place last Wednesday, and it was attended by over 50 specialists and consultants in the field.

   Three very interesting guidelines related to odour management are about to be published by the EPA Victoria. A separation distance Guideline, a landfill buffer Guideline and a Guidance for Assessing odour. A couple of days ago, an informative session on these three guidelines took place. Mr Chris Bydder, a well-known odour expert and EPA Victoria officer, explained for 2 hours the different approaches taken to manage odour impact in very different situations.

   Last year, EPA Victoria released two publications related to odour management: The EPA Publication 1880: Biofilter design and maintenance and the EPA Publication 1881: Guidance for Field Odour Surveillance. Once again, this administration is about to publish three more guidelines dealing with odour management.

   The first document has the title Guidance for assessing odour (Pub 1883) and it has been published in June. The text provides information on how to assess the risk posed by odour emission sources and to understand the receiving environment where effects might occur. This guidance is primarily intended for government, the planning sector, practitioners and specialists, who need to understand offensive odours that are associated with a development proposal. This text will propose three levels of assessment, depending on the scale or complexity of the scenario.

  The second document is the Landfill buffer guideline (Pub 1950). This document will set acceptable uses within landfill buffers based on the proximity to a population. The doc is planned to be released for public consultation this August here.

  The last guideline is an update of an existing separation distance guideline from 2013 (pub 1518) that will be replaced by the publication 1949. This text has included an updated list of industries and separation distances. In addition, the new guidance incorporates a methodology for assessing the applicability and suitability of separation distances. Last but not least, this document provides further guidance on considering the variation of separation distances.

Article edited on the 29^th of July to include the link to the publication 1883.

   If you find this article interesting, you might also be interested in these articles:

• Environmental Science Series: Changing the conversation of odour management
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• Two new Guidances on odour management in Victoria, Australia