The Stambridge sewage treatment plant has already breached one of its strict operating conditions, a public meeting designed to quell residents' fears has been told.

Odour levels at the plant have been recorded more than three times above the limit set by the Environment Agency.

But agency bosses told the, at times, hostile meeting in Stambridge Memorial Hall last night that they would issue the all-important waste management licence today.

The promise of the licence, and a full report into the plant, came from the agency's Frank Saunders at the start of a two-and-three-quarter hour meeting hosted by the agency and Anglian Water - one which the agency was ordered to hold by Environment minister Michael Meacher last week.

Amid regular interruptions and angry questioning, Mr Saunders told the 50-strong audience: "We are in a position to issue this licence and fully intend to tomorrow."

He said the agency would carry out weekly inspections of the plant in the first few months of operation.

But he admitted the Environment Agency had already had to warn Anglian Water to cut odour levels after a recent inspection showed they were at 20 parts per million (ppm) when the safety level was six ppm.

The admission comes less than two weeks after the agency gave Anglian Water the green light to start pumping sewage sludge to the plant - without a licence to ensure legally binding safety conditions.

Both the agency and Anglian Water have insisted the plant is safe to operate.

But the agency has consistently refused to explain to the public why it has not been able to issue a licence.

At the meeting, Rayleigh MP Dr Michael Clark told residents the only reason it had been called was because of his meeting with Mr Meacher at the House of Commons last Tuesday.

And he demanded to know why pumping of sewage sludge from Anglian Water's Southend plant had been taking place on and off since July without a licence or the knowledge of residents.

He said: "I think we are entitled to know why the word of a minister, the word given to members in this room by the agency, that there would be no pumping without a licence has been broken."

The agency's Anglian region general manager Robert Runcie said: "Where we were fundamentally in error was that we didn't tell people pumping was in place. We were in the wrong to have done that."

The Stambridge plant is designed to treat all sewage sludge from Southend with cement kiln dust. The plant is the first full-scale one of its kind in the UK.

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