A composting company has been fined £17,000 after complaints of "sickening" odours from the site.
Billy Bowie Special Projects Ltd in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, kept fish waste unrefrigerated for days and failed to ensure that offensive smells were kept under control, prosecutors said.
The firm pleaded guilty to two charges at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court after breaching their permit between September and December 2013.
Officers from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) investigated the premises at Moorfield industrial estate after receiving several complaints from members of the public living in the area.
They said "putrid" smells were preventing them from opening their windows and using their gardens.
Sepa officers reported that a shutter door on a shed used for composting waste was being left open and the site's bio-filter, which controls odours, was not functioning properly.
They did not follow Sepa advice to stop receiving fish waste until it was fixed.
Gavin Ferguson, Sepa's reporting officer, said: "Complainants have explained that the odours have prevented them from opening windows at their homes or using their gardens, and in some cases they did not want to go outside at all.
"They described the odour as 'heavy and sickening', and 'horrible', 'heavy' and 'putrid'.
"Billy Bowie Special Projects Limited operates a process which is inherently odorous and there are conditions in their permit which, if complied with, should ensure that offensive odours do not leave the site.
"By failing to comply with certain conditions of their permit and also failing to properly maintain the biofilter, the company have caused a significant negative impact to the local area.
"By keeping a proportion of the site's fish waste unrefrigerated in the reception building for several days as part of the bulking-up activity, they further added to their likelihood of creating odour."
Billy Bowie Special Projects pleaded guilty on Monday to breaching the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2000 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article