Community reports

Industrial and commercial activities can create odours, but not all odours are unlawful. The Department of Environment, Science and Innovation’s role is to investigate concerns about odours released by operators to determine if they have breached their environmental authority.

The department does not conduct field inspections in response to every individual odour report. However, a field inspection may be conducted in response to a high volume of reports that indicate a significant pollution or nuisance event. Where there is evidence of operators not complying with their environmental obligations, the department will take necessary enforcement action and ensure that any ongoing issues are addressed.

Some matters are complex and impact the community more broadly. Further information on some of these, including odour at Swanbank and New Chum in Ipswich, can be found at Odour monitoring programs. You can also find out more about the departments approach to compliance and enforcement.

The following dashboard shows the community reports received by the department. Data is updated weekly, can be filtered by a date range and is presented by:

• the nature of the concern
• description of the nature of concern
• description of the odour (if applicable).