Smelly Neighbors Residents Near Regional Compost Plant In Colbert Want The Plant Closed Despite Upgrades Made To Help Reduce Smell And Noise

Spokane’s rising spring temperatures are heating up a familiar controversy at the regional compost plant in Colbert.

Before May’s end, city council members plan to decide the future of the plant they temporarily closed last fall amidst passionate complaints the facility stunk.

While supporters of the plant say it lets off an “earthy, musky smell,” detractors maintain the smell is “sour,” like “sweaty gym socks” or “rotten garbage.”

Several upset neighbors already are gearing up to fight any plans to keep the plant open through the summer.

They say that it not only smells now, but that it never stopped sending foul odors into the air during Spokane’s warm winter. They refuse to go through a summer like last year, when the smells kept them locked inside their homes.

“We’re just asking that they stop the smell so that we can have barbecues in the evening like we did the year before last,” said John Dale, who lives just west of the plant.

Mark Jones manages the plant for O.M. Scott and Co., the firm hired by the city’s Regional Solid Waste Project to oversee the composting operation. He said several changes have been made that should nearly eliminate last year’s problems.

The company bought a $200,000 piece of machinery that turns the rows of compost, adding air to the organic material, which prevents it from heating up. The firm also has a better mix of yard waste, with potentially smelly materials offset by non-smelly matter.

During the first year of operation, problems were “perhaps inevitable,” Jones said. “We can do so much better this year.”

At least one neighbor thinks the machinery designed to eliminate odors has created yet another problem.

Neil Membrey, who describes himself as “a frustrated and bitter Colbert resident,” told the council last week that problems with the plant have “gone beyond odor.”

The compost turner, known as a scarab, sounds like a locomotive, he said.

“I’m trying to keep rational, but I’m getting upset now,” Membrey said.

Allan deLaubenfels, the county’s zoning enforcement officer, said he recently did a sound check on the scarab and it registered too high. But Scott is buying a sound “suppressant package” that is expected to take care of the problem.

“If that’s the case, that’s the end of the violation,” said deLaubenfels, who added that a lawnmower puts out more noise than the scarab.

Eric Skelton, director of the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority, said he’s received several calls from neighbors upset about the plant’s odors.

Last fall, Skelton told the council that while some of the smells at the plant could be lessened, the topography of the site made eliminating smells impossible.

Many of the neighbors most bothered by the site live west of the plant in a valley. At night, hot air pushes on the cool air, forcing any odors into the valley below.

Skelton recently said he hasn’t changed his earlier concerns.

“If the expectation of the neighborhood is that there won’t be any off-site odors, that’s an impossible situation for this facility,” he said.

Skelton presently is investigating problems at the plant and said that the patience he showed last year won’t continue into this season.

Skelton said that last year he wanted to “allow time to see how things worked out. That time has now passed.”

SCAPCA isn’t the only agency studying the compost plant. The county Health District is in the midst of a study to see if composting could be detrimental to neighbors’ health.

Results of the study aren’t expected until this fall.

City Council member Bev Numbers said she thinks that may be too late for the north Spokane plant.

If smell problems persist, “I could not in clear conscience keep it open and make those people go through the same thing as last summer,” said Numbers, who last fall described the smell as similar to that of a pig barn.

Mayor Jack Geraghty shares Numbers’s concerns, adding that the council plans some sort of decision by Wednesday.

“Is it functioning the way we hoped it would, or is it driving neighbors out of the area?” he said.

Bob and Paula Davis live across the street from the plant and think many of their neighbors’ complaints are baseless.

At times, they smell something similar to a farm odor but nothing that makes them even close to nauseous.

“It’s really in the eye of the beholder,” said Paula Davis, adding that those bothered by the smell are the “noisy minority.”

Phil Williams, director of the Solid Waste Project, said keeping the plant open is essential to the region’s waste-disposal system. The compost plant takes about 8 percent of the yard waste that normally would go to the incinerator.

“Our goal is to make this thing successful,” Williams said. “We’re trying to do everything we can to make it work.”