The city of St. Albans is amplifying its efforts to track down the source of an offensive odor that’s been wafting through part of a downtown neighborhood since the beginning of the year.
City Manager Dominic Cloud said officials have launched a telephone hotline to allow city residents, and visitors, to report when they smell the strong odor, which Cloud said the city thinks is coming from the Dairy Farmers of America milk processing plant.
“We’ve tried to activate the community around the co-op who was complaining,” Cloud said during a recent interview. “I don’t want to be in a place six weeks from now where they’re saying, ‘You didn’t do enough to protect us,’ so I need their assistance in that effort."
The St. Albans Messenger, which has been chronicling the odor saga, reported the news of the hotline last week.
According to Cloud, the offensive odor, which he said smells like sulfur and rotting animal flesh, was detected soon after the owners of the Dairy Farmers of America plant completed some work on their wastewater treatment system in January.
Since then, the city and the dairy plant have been battling over where the smell is originating.
According to Cloud, representatives from the dairy plant have been coming to city council meetings and promising to install filters and add chemicals to its wastewater system to cut down on the smell.
“The creamery has taken several actions to ensure that odor emissions are appropriately managed,” Dairy Farmers of America spokesperson Kim O’Brien said in a written statement. “Most recently we engaged a third-party consultant to perform odor monitoring. Odor monitoring at the site is ongoing, and these results will inform appropriate next steps at the creamery.”
But the smell is still strong, Cloud said, and so he is now gathering reports from the new phone tip line, and preparing for the city’s next move, which could include taking the company to court.
That’s not a step the city, which proudly identifies with its dairy farming heritage, is eager to take.
“It’s not a great space for me to have to square off against a major employer and a large section of our tax base,” Cloud said. “That’s why I resisted for six months, but I couldn’t resist any longer and we were unhappy with the pact in which they were solving it.”
Cloud said plant officials have both denied that the smell was coming from the plant while also saying they were addressing the issue.
The stench worsened during the summer, Cloud said, and as it continues into fall, the city is seriously contemplating taking stronger action.
“For more than 100 years the creamery has been an important fixture in Vermont’s dairy industry,” O’Brien wrote in her email comment. “We have made significant investments in this plant and the community. As we work to address this complex issue we appreciate constructive engagement with our neighbors and the city.”
