Progress is being made in tackling the large compost fire responsible for a pall of vile smelling smoke hanging over Falmouth and Penryn recently.

Falmouth and Truro MP Jayne Kirkham paid a visit to the firefighters tackling the fire at the Greenspot green waste centre at Higher Kergillick Farm this morning.

She said saying she was impressed by the ongoing operation but the scale of what they were tackling was huge.

Writing on Facebook she said they were tackling a large and difficult fire.

“They have run a water pipe across roads and land from the reservoir to the site and have retained professionals to use heavy equipment to carefully move and spread the compost while using the water to dampen it,” she said.

“The impacted nature of the huge compost pile is what was keeping the fire going and making it unreachable. So they are having to systematically break it down. It is a big job but they are working constantly throughout the day and safely covering the compost at night.

“Their system is working and they are hoping to break the back of the job over the job over the coming four days when you should be noticing a lessening of the smoke.

“It’s an impressive operation now there is a system is in place and the owner is cooperating fully. Progress is being made.”

Firefighters were called to the Greenspot centre at Higher Kergilliack Farm, near Falmouth, at 8.22am on Monday, September 30. The fire has been burning continuously since then and probably started earlier than that.

It has resulted in plumes of vile smoke hanging over Falmouth and Penryn and surrounding villages for weeks on end, depending in the wind direction.

The firefighter leading the team Martyn Addinall from Falmouth Fire Station has said the burning pile is about 100 metres long by 30 metres wide and the height of a two-storey building.

He said it’s all alight and deep-seated and every time they dig more of the pile away they find that everything within it is engulfed in fire.

Meanwhile the centre had stopped taking anymore green waste.