Frustrated residents have written to the Department of Environment and Climate Change for copies of annual reports from companies in the area, detailing the levels and types of emissions.

The request was one of the first acts of a residents’ committee formed last month to pursue a campaign to try to pinpoint the cause of the pungent smell reported in Rutherford, Windella Downs, Farley and Oakhampton.

Investigations by the department had failed to yield any clues.

Led by Aberglasslyn resident Karen Turner, the committee wrote to the department on Friday asking for the 2007 annual returns of Australian Waste Oil Refineries, Transpacific Industries, Wax Converters Textiles and National Ceramic Industries that operate in the estate.

In addition, they asked for any and all information pertaining to emission types, emission monitoring, emission levels and licence breaches for those companies and any other industry in the area.

Ms Turner said the information was a starting point to find out what people were breathing.

But it wasn’t only residents who were affected: employees in the vicinity of the estate, particularly at newly-developed bulky goods centre, had also joined the campaign.

“We want to be able to understand what the Department of Environment and Climate Change knows and the degree of pollution they are aware of in contrast to what we’re actually experiencing,” Ms Turner said yesterday.

“It’s really to educate ourselves about the industries out there and what we’re actually breathing.”

Residents also wanted to know the details of monitoring points of industry emissions within the Rutherford Industrial Estate and surrounding 20km radius, and any pollution, emission or odour complaints from Aberglasslyn, Allandale, Anambah, Bishops Bridge, Farley, Four Mile Creek, Gillieston Heights, Harpers Hill, Heddon Greta, Keinbah, Kurri Kurri, Lochinvar, Louth Park, Loxford, Maitland, Melville, Mount Dee, Oakhampton, Oakhampton Heights, Rutherford, Sawyers Gully, South Maitland, Telarah, The Sanctuary, West Maitland, Windella, Windella Downs, and Windermere in the past 10 years.

The requests were made under section 320 of the NSW Protection of the Environment Act.

Ms Turner said the committee was pursuing a number of activities in the campaign to track down the smell, particularly a series of running log sheets for residents to record when they smelt the odour, their location and the time of

day.

The committee was also pursuing government funding for a “Bucket Brigade”, an air sampling project under Air Care Australia.