|
Tired of Smelling Trash? Email communications and phone calls are the only way we can know that your area is being impacted by odors. The landfill staff and I have received several calls recently reporting odors in the area.
We also investigate other odor sources in the area. The landfill is in the Sunset Industrial Area which houses industrial operations - wastewater treatment facilities (4), biomass waste-to-energy plant, compost operations, propane distributors, agricultural operations (dairy and chicken farm NW of landfill), and others – all within the general vicinity of the landfill (and your area). What is unfortunate is that the constituents of the odors from many of these facilities are similar – organic waste emissions – so it’s often difficult to distinguish what you are smelling. For that reason, it helps if, when you call, you identify the specific dates and times of the odors; we then try to correlate that information to activities at the landfill (did we just receive a particularly smelly load?) and/or weather conditions (what facilities are upwind from your house). In terms of what we are doing to minimize odors, we had a consultant evaluate the landfill and associated facilities (recycling and compost facilities) to do our part in trying to identify the odors we have control over and what we could do to minimize them. The study identified that the most likely potential sources of odors would be the compost facility and landfill gas. Landfill gas is the result of the natural breakdown of waste in the landfill; the odor-causing constituents are sulfides and ammonia so you’d experience a rotten-egg odor. Health-wise, sulfides such as hydrogen sulfide are only dangerous in very high concentrations (e.g. potentially fatal if breathed at 500 ppm – parts per million); however surface emissions at landfills legally cannot exceed 25 ppm. You should have no reason to worry about health effects. As a result of the study, we have been constantly making improvements to the landfill gas collection system (replacing pipes, sealing wells, adding wells and monitoring probes) and have been trying new technologies and operational methods to minimize odors from the compost (purchasing new equipment that processes the material faster and covering the compost rows with wood chips). If we determine the odors you smell are indeed from our facility, we’ll need to reevaluate our methods. But please also know there are other odors sources that many people are not aware of. Sometimes processes at treatment plants go awry or material stored at biomass or compost facilities – even cattle feed - can rot so we need to investigate those sources as well. Christina Hanson 
Gennifer Mitchell, Realtor | cell: 916-316-1904 email: gennifermitchell@comcast.net | website: www.westrosevillenews.com Connect Realty | Focused in Placer and Sacramento Counties 
|