Residents in Edmonton’s far west end are getting fed up with an unrelenting bad smell. Nicole Drysdale had no idea there was a long history of a terrible smell when she first bought her home in the Trumpeter neighbourhood three years ago.
Her home is about seven kilometres away from Cleanit Greenit Composting System Inc., a composting facility residents say the stench is coming from.
“It disrupts your sleep because you have your windows open, or sometimes it gets through the ventilation system, it wakes you up in the middle of the night,” Drysdale said.
“The smell is so bad outside it just permeates your house.”
Other residents have experienced similar problems from the smell, many voicing their concerns on a Facebook page dedicated to the issue.
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Serge Muchinsky fell in love with the area and built a home in the Hawks Ridge neighbourhood. He said the view is stunning, but the stench isn’t.
“I’m not against composting,” Muchinsky said. “It should be done appropriately without polluting residential areas.”.
He has made calls to the city, Alberta Environment and Parks and to the company itself, and said he handed out papers with those complaint numbers on it to encourage other residents to call when they get a whiff.
“Let’s make, together, this area nice and beautiful without this unpleasant odour,” Muchinsky said.
Cleanit Greenit says any resident with concerns is encouraged to give them a call if they think the compost facility is to blame for a foul odour.
“If you’re getting odour in the west end please call us, because 95 per cent of the cases we can get rid of it within the hour,” Cleanit Greenit owner Kirstin Castro-Wunsch said.
The company said it has an odour patrol team with the goal of preventing bad smells. Castro-Wunsch said they’ve sometimes been the source of the bad smells drifting into the residential area, including once last year.
“This year, a lot of it’s coming from sewer and it smells exactly the same.”
Drysdale said she isn’t convinced the smell is coming from somewhere else.
“It’s just a very distinct odour that you can’t mistake with anything else,” Drysdale said.
Global News reached out to Epcor, which looks after sewer systems Castro-Wunsch referred to. In an email, Epcor said it has found no evidence that the sewer system contributes to the odour issues in the area.
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Cleanit Greenit has been under investigation by Alberta Environment and Parks since 2011, however, the government said on Friday the site was inspected within the past week.
“We have directed site owners to implement a strategy to more effectively manage odours that is in line with the facility’s operating approval,” the government said in an emailed statement.
“While composting facilities generally emit strong odours due to the nature of the product, it is often difficult to identify the origins of some odours due to the presence of other similar industries (i.e., sewage and waste).”
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