"You have one council policing another council and by default they always seem to end up fighting in the courts. It's two councils playing with our money in the courts. It's stupidity.
"HDC should have an environmental conscience. It shouldn't [need] a regional council to tell it it's doing bad, but when that happens it should accept the findings. It's absurd that it doesn't," Mr Hadlum said.
The money spent on legal action would be better spent closing and remediating the landfill site. "Closure is the only solution," he said.
Mr Hadlum said HDC would never be able to halt the smell as it was leaking from all round the landfill and the ground water.
HDC's statement said its odour-reducing initiatives included a leachate sump odour bio filter, decommissioning the leachate pond and installing a gas flare to burn gases from the landfill.
HDC infrastructure services group manager Gallo Saidy said the abatement decision was influenced by lobby group pressure not facts, and the odour intensity was overstated.
Horizons said its own odour monitoring validated public concerns.
The penalties for HDC not complying with an abatement notice are a $750 infringement notice or prosecution with a fine not exceeding $600,000.
Meanwhile, the Levin landfill's consent conditions are the subject of an unrelated and ongoing mediation process, to be completed in September, with participants including NLG, HDC and Horizons.
Horizons strategy and regulation group manager Nic Peet said the abatement notice was not connected to the mediation.
"Horizons regularly assesses compliance in its role as regulator. It continues to do this, irrespective of the mediation," he said.
