Cedar Grove Composting says its stench control has improved

Published 10:49 pm Sunday, April 12, 2009

EVERETT — With the weather warming up, the true test of measures to quell the smell at Cedar Grove Composting is coming soon.

The company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to remedy a horrific stench that was traced to its Smith Island operation last summer. More steps are planned.

A company official believes the measures, which include installing doors on an open-air building and planting hundreds of large trees, should help snuff the stink this summer.

“We think we will get a lot of positive things this year,” Cedar Grove vice president Jerry Bartlett said.

An official with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, which has enforcement power over odors not related to industrial pollution, said the agency has signed off on several measures.

“We really like some of the things they’ve proposed to us in terms of the enclosure piece,” said Jim Nolan, compliance officer for the Seattle-based agency.

The agency wants the company to construct a building to contain the open-air machine that grinds the yard debris and food waste into compostable material, though that expensive project likely won’t happen this year.

Last June, an odor began to overwhelm much of Marysville, Sunnyside and north Everett, depending which way the wind was blowing.

Yard debris and food waste from ­throughout Snohomish County and north King County is trucked to Cedar Grove’s Smith Island facility, which opened in 2004. The company turns the material into compost for gardens.

Complaints this winter were low, but the company’s volume of material increases dramatically in the spring.

Sara Dougherty of Marysville said she hasn’t experienced the smell much recently. “It’s just around the corner, though,” she said.

Depending on the weather, a big influx of grass clippings and other yard waste usually hits in May or June, Bartlett said.

Last year, the odor hit its peak about July 1. People blamed the smell for burning noses, throats, eyes and lungs and for being unable to open their windows or spend time in their yards when the weather was warm. The odor was likened to diarrhea, a barnyard and a rendering plant, among other things.

Complaints led to an investigation by the Clean Air Agency, which traced the odor to Cedar Grove. The agency ordered the company to tame the stench lest it be hit with thousands of dollars in fines — as it was at the company’s other facility at Maple Valley in King County.

Some interim measures were taken, including adding odor control liquid to the compost mix. Complaints dropped, though it’s not certain whether it was due to the measures or a drop in the waste being processed. No fines were levied, but the agency ordered the company to continue to work on odor control.

Over the winter, complaints to the Clean Air Agency targeting Cedar Grove dropped from a high of 147 in July to zero in December, Nolan said.

Cedar Grove hired a consultant, which recommended the trees, the door on the building, more aggressive maintenance for a holding tank for drippings from the raw compost, and enclosing the grinder, Bartlett said. The company also plans to put more cover over the compost in a later stage in the process, he said.

Cedar Grove will do all of these things this year except for putting up the building for the grinder. The building could cost $300,000, Bartlett estimated. Because of that expense, the agency is giving the company some leeway, Nolan said, and has yet to set a deadline.

The roll-up doors on its “tipping” building, where the raw compost material is dumped on arrival, is expected to cost more than $100,000, according to Bartlett.

Recently, the company imported 500 trees — it bought 300 leafy trees and trucked in 200 conifers — to absorb odors and eventually serve as a windbreak, Bartlett said.

Most of the trees, between 10 and 20 feet tall, have been planted around the western, northern and eastern edges of the property, some of them on top of a berm up to 6 feet high.

Bartlett wouldn’t say how much the company spent on the trees but estimated it at “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Bartlett declined to itemize the company’s expenses so far, but said it’s substantial.

“I think that when it’s all said and done you could say we’ll have spent over a million dollars on solutions,” he said.

Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439, sheets@heraldnet.com.