The city will try using carbon filters and pine-scented mist to battle a nasty stench provincial environmental investigators are blaming on Hamilton's compost plant.

Crown Point residents started complaining in mid-June about an odour so strong it triggered nausea and forced them to hide indoors.

Patricia Pearson, who lives just north of the Centre on Barton mall, said on the worst days the smell made people in her household "literally gag." She said the odour was intermittent over the last week but returned with a vengeance Thursday evening. "This is just nuts," she said.

She got an email from the city that same night assuring her the smell was under investigation and the compost facility was being monitored, but a cause was not specified. Last week, city public works head Dan McKinnon cautioned the evidence so far did not point to the Burlington Street East compost plant, which is run by contractor AIM Environmental.

But the facility was officially fingered as the culprit by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change in a brief email to The Spectator late Thursday. The ministry did not say Friday what it has asked the city to do or if any enforcement actions are expected.

The city has been working since last summer - which was also stinky - to find solutions to the problem, said Ward 4 Coun. Sam Merulla, who urged residents in early June to flood the city with "specific complaints" about the stench, including locations and time of day.

"We essentially blew the whistle on ourselves," he said. "We are going to keep working until this issue is resolved."

City council approved $1.5 million last summer for a variety of stink-fighting measures, including an experiment that involves drawing facility air through carbon filters. City waste disposal manager Emil Prpic said the city is still waiting for ministry permission to use the technology in the compost curing building.

In the meantime, the city is paying a contractor to install a fenceline "misting system" that is designed to help neutralize wafting odours with a spray that will likely have a "light pine scent." (The odour-fighting company also apparently offers a bubble gum option.)

Prpic said the city may also try to "temporarily divert" some green bin organics away from the composting plant that normally come from other cities.

Hamilton's plant processes up to 70,000 tonnes of organics and leaf and yard waste each year at the facility, but only half that amount comes from city residents. The rest is collected and processed on contract for Halton and Simcoe.

An "odour consultant" is also reviewing the compost plant and will report its findings within a week or two. But at the moment, the city suspects a provincially mandated change in the composting process - basically a requirement to keep the material wetter - is to blame for the odours.

For the time being, the city will continue hourly "odour patrols" around the plant and in the neighbourhood to try to sniff out any trend for spikes in odour.

Part of the problem is that Burlington Street is densely populated with industry - and therefore many potential sources of odour. But this is the third summer in a row that nasty smells have been officially linked to the plant and spurred multiple resident complaints.

mvandongen@thespec.com

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