Landfill Odors Trigger Investigation

Landfill neighbors and those who merely pass by the dump have complained for years about the stink emanating from waste deposited at Riverbend Landfill.  Now the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will have to do something about it.

Under DEQ's Nuisance Odor Strategy, once the agency receives at least 10 complaints from different home or business addresses within a 60-day period, DEQ must investigate.  According to Alex Haulman, Natural Resource Specialist with DEQ, the agency received at least 10 complaints within the 60-day period ending July 22.

Haulman and his supervisor Claudia Davis met with landfill neighbors and others in McMinnville just two days prior, on July 20th, to discuss the dump's continuing odor problem.  Haulman is new to this assignment, brought in partly because of his experience with bacterial solutions to odor problems in other industries, including dairies.

Haulman and Davis had already talked to Waste Management (WM), Riverbend Landfill's Texas-based corporate owner, about possible use of bacterial agents to literally eat odor-causing elements in the landfill.  According to them, WM has agreed to study the possibility.

Currently, WM uses "best practices" to control odors, with little success.  Those practices include efforts to keep the working face small (a relative term), covering the face every evening with a thick layer of dirt (something previous WM management did not always do), and capturing as much landfill gas as possible to burn in electricity-generating engines or to flare off.

Because there is no way to measure how much gas escapes the landfill without being captured, there is no real way to tell if WM's efforts are working -- except to smell the results.  Neighbors, passing tourists and commuters, and farmers working nearby fields will tell you that the results are damning.  Especially in cooler months, the stink lies like a blanket across the valley on both sides of the landfill and the South Yamhill River.

If bacteria prove able to control odors better than current practices, use of bacteria will become the "best practice," and DEQ will require WM to use the technique.

In the meantime, DEQ will send investigators into the field to determine the source (known in this case) and the frequency, intensity, duration, and offensiveness of the odors people are complaining about.

Other sites that have triggered investigations include Daimler Trucks in Portland and Amerities in the Dalles.  The Daimler investigation went to a DEQ odor panel to determine whether a legal nuisance had occurred.  Based on over 700 attempts to detect an offensive odor with only a 3.2% success rate, DEQ staff recommended a "no nuisance" finding.  Neighbors, however, pointed to a contemporaneous private study that turned up a 20% odor rate out of 24,000 attempts.

As representative for the district containing Daimler, Speaker of the House Tina Kotek intervened, and DEQ may reconsider.  Unfortunately, Riverbend neighbors have only Mike Nearman to assist them.

For a good look at the process DEQ uses in investigating (or ignoring) odor complaints, read this OPB Earthfix article.