Companies Wake Up And Smell The Coffee

Signs at the Coeur d’Alene Plaza apartments in downtown Spokane announce that smoking is allowed only in tenants’ rooms so others won’t suffer from second-hand smoke.

Non-smoking tenant Joe Roberts can’t find clean air, even in his own room.

It’s not tobacco smoke that bothers Roberts, but the soot and odor of beans roasting at 4 Seasons Coffee Roasting Co.

The company’s chimney is about 30 feet from Roberts’ window.

“It stinks to high heaven,” Roberts said Tuesday. “Earlier this morning, when I was washing my dishes, I thought the building was on fire.”

Relief is coming. Four Seasons owner Tom Hutchinson has applied for permits to add an afterburner on his roaster.

The $25,000 improvement should scrub most of the soot and odors from the exhaust.

There were no air pollution standards for coffee roasters when 4 Seasons moved to 222 N. Howard in 1982, said Mabel Caine at the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority.

The company doesn’t exceed standards adopted since then, but “we have had complaints about the operation,” Caine said. “It’s a given that there’s smoke and odor problems from coffee roasters.”

If all goes as planned, Spokane County’s four coffee roasting companies all will have afterburners by summer.

Thomas Hammer Coffee Roasting Co., which was cited last year for violating air pollution standards, plans to move its roasting equipment out of NorthTown Mall this spring, said the owner. The new roaster, in the Spokane Valley, will have an afterburner, Hammer said.

The company will continue selling coffee in NorthTown, Hammer said.

Uccello Espresso, 2910 E. 29th, which also was cited last year, since has installed an afterburner, an employee said.

Craven’s Coffee, 111 S. Cedar, was the first Spokane roaster with a pollution-scrubbing device. But the afterburner, which was installed last year, never was used and since has been returned to the manufacturer, said co-owner Becky Templin.

Templin said her company is installing a second roaster and an afterburner large enough to handle both. The work will be done “hopefully in the next two weeks,” she said.