Youngsters at Kirkstall Valley Primary fear there will be a noxious stench and an invasion of flies if it goes ahead.

They held up posters saying: "Waste not wanted" and "Buzz off flies."
Leeds City Council wants to revive a waste transfer facility on Evanston Avenue on a site which was burned out in 2002.

The plan is to take up to 100,000 tonnes of black bin waste a year from north-west Leeds. An estimated 65 heavy lorries a day are expected to and from the site.

The city council has received bids from three companies interested in operating a waste treatment facility – which might be an incinerator –in east Leeds.

As part of the project, a site to hold the waste temporarily might be needed at Evanston Avenue.

Eleven-year-old Jessica Hall said: "The smells won't be very pleasant. We like to go out into the fresh air in the playground and that won't be very nice."

Jessica Kirby, 10, said: "We grow vegetables at the school and they will be affected by pollution from trucks."

Former pupil Jean Mellor, 67, of Haddon Avenue, said: "The flies used to be so bad you couldn't sit in the garden. The council has told us there won't be any smell or flies this time because they will be sucked out by a pump. But we don't know whether it's true or not."

Mother-of-two Leanne Turner, of Haddon Avenue, said: "The smell used to be horrible and you couldn't keep your door open or the flies would come in."

Kirkstall councillor Bernard Atha recalled: "There was a really noxious smell and the plague of tiny black flies was Biblical. The worry is that a waste transfer station will make the area uninhabitable again."

Rachel Reeves, Prospective Labour Parliamentary Candidate for West Leeds, said that during this summer some garden waste had been left to rot on the site and the stench was awful. "Imagine what it would be like with domestic waste," she said.

"The council is trying to foist the waste station on Kirkstall without consultation and it is unacceptable. It looks as if it wants to railroad this through.

"We have seen from the binmen's strike that the council is not in favour of conciliation. "

She said a deputation of local people hoped to make their case before the full city council meeting in January.

But the council's environment spokesman Coun James Monaghan claimed the residents' fears were groundless. "The original waste station was built in the 1970s," he said, "and technology has moved on since then.

"I have seen a modern waste transfer station in Shrewsbury where I stood in front of a mound of rubbish and couldn't smell anything. I hope that Kirkstall ward councillors will get the chance to see this."

Coun Monaghan said a preferred operator for the treatment facility would be selected in the summer and then the project would go through the planning process for up to 18 months.

Even if it goes ahead, he said, the waste transfer site would not be built until around 2016.