EVERETT — Hearings are to begin later this month on an appeal filed by Cedar Grove Composting to fight $169,000 in fines for odor violations.
The north Everett company has been the target of many complaints about bad smells the past few years.
Hearings are scheduled for Feb. 28 through March 4 with the state’s Pollution Control Hearings Board in Tumwater.
The fines were levied last July by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency for violations dating back to 2009 at both the Everett plant and the company’s operation at Maple Valley in King County.
Investigators for the clean air agency traced odor complaints to Cedar Grove Composting on Smith Island on Aug. 24, 2009, and May 25, 2010. A fine of $14,000 was levied for the 2009 violation and a fine of $13,000 for the incident last May, said Laurie Halvorson, director of compliance for the agency.
The remainder of the fines involve complaints about the Maple Valley plant. That plant opened in 1989; the Everett plant opened in 2004.
Cedar Grove’s Everett location receives much of the yard waste and food scraps collected by garbage haulers in Snohomish County, and receives some from King County as well. The company contracts with waste haulers and local cities.
“Cedar Grove is utilizing the appeal process to challenge the violations because we believe them to be mistaken,” spokesman Laird Harris said. “We expect to get a fair hearing in the appeal process.”
Cedar Grove officials have said that wind data from weather stations in the area has shown that many of the complaints were wrongly traced to their operation.
“Technical analysis establishes that the odor complaints upon which the civil penalties are based are meteorologically improbable,” the company’s attorney wrote in the appeal, filed last August.
Cedar Grove has pointed out that other potential odor sources exist near its Everett location, such as the Marysville and Everett wastewater treatment plants and Pacific Topsoils.
In its appeal, the company accused the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency of failing to investigate the other possible sources.
In the past few years, however, whenever agency inspectors have been able to trace odors in the area after receiving complaints, it’s been to Cedar Grove, officials have said.
The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, which governs odors generated by non-industrial sources, has issued five “notices of violation” to Cedar Grove since 2008. Three of those resulted in fines, including a $2,000 fine issued in April 2008 along with the two more recent incidents.
People who have complained of the odor say there are many more instances than agency inspectors can verify.
“Cedar Grove runs up huge legal bills fighting its responsibility rather than being a good neighbor and taking care of the odor problem permanently,” said Mike Davis of Marysville, leader of the group Citizens for a Smell-Free Snohomish County, in a written statement.
Cedar Grove has spent nearly $2 million in odor control measures since 2008, according to documents obtained from the Snohomish Health District. These measures include trees to absorb odor and serve as windbreaks; lost revenue for diverting some compostable material to other companies or locations at peak times; and an apron and roll-up doors for the large building where raw compostable material is dropped off by trucks, to minimize air that escapes.
Fees for attorneys and consultants are not listed among the costs.
From August through November of last year, Cedar Grove hired trained specialists to patrol the area checking for odors, according to the company. The specialists found Cedar Grove’s contribution to the odors reported during that time to be “insignificant.”
Still, the stink persists, many neighbors say.
Davis has said Cedar Grove should completely enclose its operation. Company officials have said the cost of such a building would be prohibitive, that it would be several times the $25 million it cost to build the original plant and that much of that cost would be passed on to households and businesses that have their compostable waste picked up.
Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439; sheets@heraldnet.com.
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