Residents raising a stink over composting program

Whoever smelled it, has to deal with it out in Maple Valley which neighbors multiple waste facilities. But residents are raising a stink, specifically over the Cedar Grove Composting site that they say is ruining the area’s air quality.

“It’s been an ongoing issue,” Alissa told the Dori Monson Show. “Last Friday I dropped my son off at school and the smell was so strong it was burning my throat … I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“When I left the grounds, I felt better,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. I can’t believe my son is being bused into this environment and being forced to breathe this air.”

RELATED: Marysville complains about Cedar Grove Composting site

Alissa admits that she chose to buy a house in the Maple Valley area, near the Cedar Grove Composting facility. But she argues that driving out to schools to smell their air isn’t a common thought people have.

“It’s like a sickly, sweet, acidic smell,” Alissa said. “When you feel it, it burns your eyes, it burns your throat. It smells like rotting waste, like rotting trash. When you smell it, you know what it is … it’s a constant background smell at the school, and in my neighborhood four miles away, you can smell it.”

An attorney suing Cedar Grove told the Dori Monson Show, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has received about 4,000 complaints against the composting company, totaling 925 pages, between 2012-15. The agency has issued 16 civil penalties in the past, amounting to $126,000 in fines. There have been lawsuits over the smell, and Cedar Grove won them. In fact, Marysville residents have complained about another Cedar Grove’s facility.

According to Jay Blazey, a lawyer for Cedar Grove, the company takes such complaints seriously. But he argues there are other factors at play.

“I think one of the things people think is that we are not doing anything about this, and that is just not the case,” he said.

Blazey said that the company is working with government agencies and have been told they are compliant with regulations. He also argued that they are doing everything possible to address odors on-site, and that the Department of Ecology has run studies and concluded there are no health risks posed by the odors. He also said that they are not the only operation in the area with odor issues. But he would not go as far as to place any blame.

The rule does state: He who denied it …

“The problem with odors is that they are pretty subjective. You can talk with one person and they say it smells, and we’ve talked to another neighbor and they say they’ve never smelled it.”

“We don’t want to point fingers at people, but we can’t ignore the fact that there are other odor sources in the area … that’s where the King County landfill is, that’s a neighbor of ours,” he said. “There are other operations near us that are taking in yard waste and green waste.”