Raising a stink: Residents face smelly situation
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Residents voiced their complaints to McMinnville aldermen Monday, saying there is a smell in their neighborhood since WastAway began processing the county’s household garbage last month.
“I don’t think anybody’s against your process or the jobs that it creates,” said resident Larry Judkins. “We’re all for that. But our No. 1 concern is the odor that you’re emitting.”
Judkins aimed his comments at WastAway officials, who attended a committee meeting to ask officials for their garbage business. Other comments were directed to members of the Board of Mayor and Alderman. Two of about 15 residents made formal comments.
Falla Street resident Dow Yates told board members the smell from WastAway, located at the old Aquatech plant on Red Road about one block from his home, is so bad he sometimes tells his grandchildren not to go outside to play.
Ron Southard, also appearing before the board, said he hoped residents could have confidence in city and county leadership by showing residents codes regulations protect them.
Their presence followed reports by city officials last month who said they had received complaints about a smell in the area. Streets and Sanitation Committee chairman Jimmy Haley described the smell as a difficult-to-describe burning odor. McMinnville Public Works Director Bill Brock, whose office is located down the street from WastAway, said it simply smelled at times like “an old dump.”
City officials also said last month the smell is noticeable at different times of the day or even different days of the week. Vice Mayor Patti Nunley, upon hearing about the odors, said she previously assured concerned residents there would not be any odor problems based on what she heard about the process and regretted they may be occurring, although noting when she visited the plant in the past, there were no odors.
Mayor Royce Davenport responded to residents on Monday by saying they were welcome to call city hall or city employees. He acknowledged the problems.
“But as you can see by the fact that the city has still not entered into a contract with them, we’re not ‘in cahoots’ in any way,” he said.
“We’re encouraging and supportive as far as industry, as far as trying to provide a better future for everyone, but we still have our own governmental requirements of what we have to do, and we are doing so to the best of our ability.”
WastAway’s vice president of sales Wade Sparkman acknowledged an odor at the plant just before citizens addressed the full board, saying the company is working on it.
“We do have an odor problem in the neighborhood, and I’m sure some of these folks here live in the neighborhood,” he said. “The first engineering firm had us set up a 40-foot stack, 20 inches in diameter, with a big suction fan on it. They said that would take care of it. It didn’t hardly take care of it. It took care of part of it.”
Sparkman said another engineering firm is working on the problem and that WastAway has changed its hours of operation by shutting down at 2:30 p.m. and starting back up at 8 p.m., all with the intent of getting an engineering firm to put a new filtration system in.
WastAway officials, who have generated a lot of public and private support for the recycling system over the past year with hopes of revolutionizing the garbage business, asked residents to be patient.
Company associates told citizens that engineers are expected at the plant late next week. The company is looking at a variety of methods to contain the odor, including an activated carbon filtration system.