If you’ve been noticing a strong, unpleasant smell in the air around Monmouth, City Administrator Lou Leone explains that the odor isn’t coming from just one source, but two separate issues occurring at the same time:
“There are two components, we have been working on our anaerobic digester, which is a system that is designed to contain organic material. During the breakdown process, it creates methane. There was a situation that happened where it had too much material in there and we had to remove the cover to it and now that material that normally would be captured by the cover is now allowed to actually be out into the air. This is all being done under an IEPA regulated construction permit. So, for a while there some of the smell that you were getting was a little hint of methane in the air,” states Leone.
“City staff has been working with the VP’s at Smithfield, since about Labor Day weekend is when we started talking with the VP’s, so the City has been on this. They have two cleaning crews working on 12-hour shifts, so they have been working 24/7 to try to remove the material that is causing the smell. The original estimate that this was going to be cleaned up by Monday, but they unfortunately had an incident, so it has been delayed a little bit. It is our understanding that they had an issue with the rendering side and that is what caused this material to start building up. We got confirmation from the VP’s that they will work their best to get rid of the odor producing material by Thursday afternoon, Thursday night. So, by Friday, that material should be gone,” Leone adds.
The expiration date of the IEPA construction permit is October 29th, however Leone anticipates the project to be wrapped up ten days prior.
