By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — The documents won’t go before the Missouri Air Conservation Commission when it meets Thursday, but Carthage Mayor Jim Woestman hopes the panel soon will have a pile of responses from city residents on local odor problems.

The commission meeting to be held in Springfield will include discussion of potential new odor rules that could impact Carthage. The information on surveys of city residents probably won’t go to the panel until December, according to Leanne Tippett Mosby, of the Division of Environmental Quality, a part of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

“I’ve received 30 so far, but they haven’t been available for that long,” she said.

DNR is asking residents to complete the survey in another effort to pinpoint the source and severity of the city’s four-year-old odor problem. The survey was an outgrowth of a Carthage meeting earlier this year that included DNR officials, city leaders, and representatives of companies in Carthage’s industrial bottoms.

The surveys ask residents if they have experienced odors from that area, how long the problem has occurred, the duration of the problem, wind conditions and other information.

The questionnaires have been available from several outlets for about a month, but they were just mailed to customers of Carthage Water & Electric Co. starting last week. It will take approximately a month for the mailings to be completed.

“It’s really important that everyone fill them out and return them,” Woestman said. “The more specific information DNR gets on how people are affected, the better it will be.”

The Carthage meeting involved representatives of all the companies in the city’s industrial bottoms, including Renewable Environmental Solutions, a biofuels producer most often cited in complaints to 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.

Carthage residents still identify RES as the odor source. DNR received 40 odor complaints in July and August, with 36 citing RES as the suspected source.

Company officials also have refused to answer questions about odor issues, citing a lawsuit filed by Carthage resident Cynthia Sundy that argues odors from the plant are a nuisance and the company has been negligent. The lawsuit seeks punitive damages and class-action status that would allow a claim to be made on behalf of all the residents affected.

Woestman has addressed several state meetings on Carthage odor problems. He said he plans to attend Thursday’s session in Springfield , and to continue to lobby the commission about adopting stricter odor standards.

Carthage officials have been among a contingent urging the state to lower the odor threshold that triggers punitive action by the state. Currently, an odor must be detected at a dilution of 7-to-1 before the state will consider citing the offending odor producer. State regulators have been looking at a stricter standard, and DNR inspectors since July have been gathering information on odors at lower thresholds. A preliminary report on that data will be presented Thursday, though officials say not enough results have been gathered to reach a conclusion.