Joe Collins and Chancie Cavendish have average noses.

“We strive for being average,” Collins, the city’s code enforcement supervisor, joked. In seriousness, having average noses is a state health department requirement for their work as certified odor inspectors.

If their noses aren’t sensitive enough, Collins and Cavendish — the Greeley officials responsible for determining whether smells in Greeley violate city standards — won’t be able to pick up smells Greeley residents call the city to complain about. Too sensitive, and they’ll always pick up smells even after they’ve been filtered through their Nasal Ranger, a handheld tool the team uses to determine if a resident or company has created a stench so strong that it violates city’s smell standards.

If Collins catches a cold, Cavendish is the one who has to investigate a smell. It’s the reason the city has two workers trained to detect odors.

“We don’t want to by hypersensitive, and they don’t want us to be hyposensitive because we definitely don’t smell something at every turn,” Collins said. “So they want us to be as fair and as equitable as we can dealing with whatever the odor generator may be.”

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