Webb City, Carterville dealing with odor problem

Sep. 19—WEBB CITY, Mo. — Webb City and Carterville officials say they are trying to find ways of dealing with an odor some residents liken to raw sewage.

Jacob Ansley, who lives with his family south of Missouri Highway 171 and west of Madison Street, was watching a tennis match at Webb City High School on Tuesday and said he and his wife started noticing it about three weeks ago.

"We have a home gym we work out in in our garage, and we opened it up to work out in the morning, and the smell was bad enough we were wondering what in the world was it," Ansley said. "We noticed it pretty significantly because we were working out in it."

Tricia Douglas lives in Oronogo, so she said she doesn't smell it at home, but a trip to Webb City on Saturday was interrupted by the strong odor.

"It smelled like sewage, like you're in a porta-potty," Douglas said. "I didn't know it was an areawide problem until one of my friends put it on Facebook the next day. ... It smelled everywhere outside like raw sewage."

Douglas' daughter, Loralai Fisher, was with her mother and said she smelled a bad odor at Cardinals Stadium during a junior varsity football game Monday.

"It would pop in and out every once in a while, and it definitely smelled like sewage," she said.

Carterville Mayor Alan Griffin said Carterville residents also have complained about the smell.

"MODNR has been out several times, and found no violations with the sniffer technology that MODNR uses to detect any odors that might be non compliant," Griffin texted the Globe on Monday, referring to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. "The business is not in the city limits, and is composting, which creates horrible smells."

Webb City City Administrator Carl Francis said the city is investigating but believe the odor is coming from land just outside Carterville and Webb City city limits, on land just southeast of the intersection between Missouri 249 and Missouri 171.

"It's pretty rancid. It's been getting worse and worse; it's really bad right now," Francis said Monday. "We have voiced our opposition to this, and I guess it has been in place for a while, but he just now started his full-blown business."

David Holbrook, an environmental specialist in the water pollution division of DNR, said he's been to the area in response to complaints and said a company named C&L Grease and Wastewater Service owns land in the old mining areas south and east of the 171/249 interchange and has a permit to apply waste sludge on its own property.

Holbrook said odor is tightly regulated when it's coming from an industrial facility or tanks storing waste material, but things are different when it comes to applying the waste to land.

"Storage containers, any containers with waste of any kind, those are regulated via air regulations. Land application is not regulated with regard to odor."

Company statement

The company mentioned by Francis and Holbrook, C&L Grease and Wastewater Services, responded to questions from the Globe submitted by email Wednesday. However, because of threats they have received, company officials declined to provide the name of a spokesperson.

The company's email said officials don't believe they are the source of problem odors, noting that it has had a permit for land application of waste material on its property since 2018.

"We do not think that our facility is the cause of the recent odor issue. We have worked with Missouri Department of Natural Resources after multiple reports of issues at our facility, Missouri DNR has used their nasal ranger at our facility multiple times and (has) never had a reading that is a violation, nor have they found any runoff from our land application sites."

The company said its permit from the DNR allows land application of waste from food manufacturers.

"We are not permitted to spread human waste, and we never have been," the company said. "Any septic waste we obtain is required to be disposed of at a municipality wastewater treatment facility. We are the only company allowed to spread under our permit unless we contract someone to assist with land application of liquid waste obtained by our facility only and spread on pre-approved sites by Missouri DNR."

Will Runkle, with Webb City's wastewater department, visited the C&L Grease and Waste Water on Wednesday with questions regarding the odors. Francis confirmed the meeting but said Runkle was stopped at a fence and talked with a company representative.

Francis also said he has a copy of the company's permit showing that it allows sewage sludge to be applied to the property and that the city is still investigating to determine the source of the odor.

"Our employees were not allowed on the dumping site," Francis said. "We were not allowed a full inspection. We were escorted to a locked gate, and that's as far as we got. We're still investigating, and we're still trying to determine the source of the smell. We're not pointing any fingers at this time, but I will say they're the only one around that has a permit to do that kind of stuff."

C&L Grease's representative said they understand how frustrated the public is and advised anyone with concerns to continue notifying the DNR.