Morinville's stinky pet-food problem shows that the town needs a better smell bylaw, say residents.
Town resident Paul O'Dea was one of about 16 people at this week's town council meeting that were concerned about the foul odours coming from the Champion Petfoods plant. The plant makes dog food, and often covers the town with the pungent, greasy smell of meat.
O'Dea, 58, cited seven separate incidents since Aug. 2 where the plant's exhaust fouled the air over his home in Sunshine Estates. He was disappointed with the plant's efforts to keep residents informed about their smell control efforts, and called for monthly updates from here on out.
The town does not have detailed rules regulating offensive smells, O'Dea said to council, and they should. "If our experience with Champion Petfoods over the past three years teaches us anything, it teaches us that Morinville must develop a detailed air quality bylaw that speaks specifically to industrial and commercial operations."
The town's community standards bylaw says property owners must refrain from producing "offensive odours, excessive dust or smoke" that create a material annoyance to neighbours or a risk to public safety. Violators can be fined $200, rising to $400 and $600 on subsequent offences in the same year.
O'Dea said he had lodged a complaint about the smells under the bylaw prior to Tuesday's meeting, but never heard back from enforcement officials.
He called on council to pass a law that would set out detailed expectations and procedures for businesses regarding offensive smells. "Let's get on the belief that acceptable air quality is not bad for business," he said. "An air quality odour bylaw that is reasonable, predictable and enforceable is long overdue."
Mea culpa from Champion
Champion installed a $500,000 plasma injection system last year that was supposed to get rid of the smell. It didn't, so the plant proposed to add new scrubbers this July. But when a consultant found that the plant also needed changes to its layout and stacks before those scrubbers would work, the plant pushed the installation back to November.
The company has not done a good job of keeping the public informed, president Frank Burdzy told council. They had planned to issue quarterly updates, but dropped them once they got word about the additional changes from the consultant.
"I wanted to have some answers on how to we could fix it, not just tell everyone we got it wrong," he explained. "That could have been an error on my part." The company has learned its lesson, he said, and would now give monthly updates.
Workers are now rearranging the plant's interior and tweaking its production process in preparation for the installation of the new scrubbers, Burdzy said. The company will ask its contractors to guarantee the scrubbers' performance in writing, and will do a second round of baseline air quality tests to measure their effectiveness. The scrubbers will not make the plant smell-free, he noted, but should make smell problems much less common.
Champion wants this problem solved as much as anyone else, Burdzy said, and plans to spend up to $3.7 million doing so. The town has every right to penalize the plant for its smells, but they've already spent about $200,000 since May to fix the problem. "That's a pretty big penalty."
These remarks show how Champion is committed to stopping these smells, said Mayor Lloyd Bertschi. "I know it's been trying for you," he said to the audience. "It's been trying for us."
Council had more detailed smell provisions in an early draft of the community standards bylaw, Bertschi said in a later interview, but removed them as they were too prescriptive. "We didn't want it to appear we were targeting a specific business or industry." Specific controls should instead be written into development permits.
Council is working on a development agreement with the plant that will include specific odour reduction targets, Bertschi said, the details of which he could not disclose. "Hopefully by Christmas time we'll be skating outside without any issues."
Questions on the smell issue should go to 1-855-784-0340.
