October 04, 2008 10:17 pm
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By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — Carthage residents soon will be asked once again to weigh in on odor problems from the city’s industrial bottoms.
In connection with the town’s 4-year-old odor issue, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources now plans to ask residents who have been bothered by odors to complete a survey in yet another effort to pinpoint the source and severity of the problem.
Local responses, along with results of odor testing by DNR workers, will be considered by members of the Missouri Air Conservation Commission who are looking at the possibility of changing state odor rules.
“We’ve sent the commission a copy of the survey, and they’ll be getting a report on the results,” said Leanne Tippett Mosby, of DNR’s division of environmental quality.
The survey is an outgrowth of a meeting staged in August in Carthage among DNR and city officials and representatives of businesses in the industrial bottoms in the north-central part of Carthage.
It raises questions on where, when, and how often a resident has been bothered by odor problems, the type of odor, and its impact on the resident’s qualify of life.
The surveys will be distributed over the next month in bills mailed by Carthage Water and Electric Co. and will be available at Carthage City Hall, the Carthage Public Library and other locations, according to Mayor Jim Woestman.
“We hope people will fill them out and send them in,” Woestman said. “The more people get pro-active, the more we’ll be able to get done.”
The idea for the survey was advanced at the end of the Carthage meeting that included representatives of Renewable Environmental Solutions, the biofuels producer most often cited in complaints to the DNR as the source of the city’s odor problems. RES officials say the plant is not responsible for recent complaints, and that the company addressed its odor problems with equipment installed after a public nuisance lawsuit filed by the city and the Missouri attorney general’s office.
Woestman said there were odor problems earlier in the week, though he said he did not think they were bad enough to trigger a DNR violation.
“It wasn’t a knee-buckler, but it definitely made you lose your appetite,” he said.
He said that the state regulation is the obstacle for the issue in Carthage, in that the odors are strong enough to significantly affect residents’ quality of life, but not strong enough to trigger a state violation and thus bring about state enforcement.
“That’s the problem; they’re going to have to address the odor threshold,” he said of the state regulations.
An odor does not violate state standards now unless odors are detected at a dilution rate of 7-to-1. One of the first complaints about RES was filed in May 2004. Residents have said the town did not have any persistent odor problem before RES began operation that year.
State regulators are looking at a stricter standard, and DNR inspectors since July have been gathering information on odors at lower thresholds.
Preliminary findings are being compiled and will be reviewed by the commission at its next meeting.
“All the information will serve as a foundation for the commission to look at the current standard and evaluate whether that will be changed,” she said.
Information from the Carthage surveys will be submitted at a later ACC meeting, she added. DNR has set no formal deadline for the return of the Carthage surveys, Mosby said.
“The sooner we get them, and the more we get, the better it will be,” she said. “We think it will be helpful information, and we’re going to look at every one.”
ACC meeting
The Missouri Air Conservation Commission will hold its next meeting Oct. 30 at the Clarion Hotel in Springfield.
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