Blame it on the Whales

It’s not often that our Google Alert for “higher than normal volumes of mullet breeding” returns a news item, but when it does it’s a doozy. Today’s story is from Cape Town, South Africa or more specifically Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, billed as “a place where crowds gather to eat, drink, shop, socialize, and admire breathtaking views of Table Mountain.” Apparently a new breathtaking feature is the stench of rotting fish. These have accumulated in the harbor due to HTNVOMB along with a pair of humpback whales who chased a school of mackerel to an oxygen-starved demise in the shallow waters.

The Shape of Stinks to Come: The Green Revolution Devours Boulder County’s Open Space

 

I’ve written here several times about composting, the high-minded effort to turn waste into re-usable mulch. When it comes to setting up large-scale composting operations, these efforts tend to follow a familiar sad sequence. The initial proposal assures the public that the facility will be run according to the latest best practices and result in minimal odor, if any. Once the operation gets underway, nearby residents start to notice objectionable smells. The facility may deny being the source; there may be a back-and-forth as the town tries to document the stink and locate its origin. The facility may own up to being the source, and offer assurances that the smell is a mere hiccup that will disappear once the operation is fully optimized. When the smell and local objections continue, the town hires consultants who recommend installing some sort of odor remediation system. The result: the entire project comes in heavily over budget and leaves a lot of ill will in its wake. 

A common feature of these episodes is a failure to take potential odor issues seriously from the very start of the project. Why does this happen? I think it’s because proponents of large-scale composting don’t anticipate issues of scale. 

Home composting enthusiasts maintain little heaps of banana peels, apple cores, and lawn clippings in their backyards. These produce a small amount of innocuous odor. So what’s the problem in just adding everyone’s little heap to a town compost pile? 

The problem is that the amount of biomass in a commercial or municipal composting facility is exponentially larger than a backyard heap, and that the resulting odor production will also be exponentially larger. Massive odor generation is a certainty—it’s an operational issue that ought to be dealt with in detail at the preliminary engineering stage. It is not enough for planners and proponents to blithely claim that proper “turning over” and aeration of the pile will minimize odor. 

Now comes a story out of Longmont, Colorado, roughly 35 miles south of FirstNerve headquarters. Three residents have filed a lawsuit against a proposed composting facility—one that hasn’t even been built. Among other things, the lawsuit anticipates loss of property values should the facility-to-be emit “noxious odors.” Is this simply a case of NIMBYism or is there something more to it? 

What is at issue is a proposal by Boulder County to build the facility on ~40 acres of land that was purchased, with voter approval, as preserved open space with a perpetual conservation easement. By law, the county’s open space “can be used solely for passive recreation, agriculture or environmental preservation purposes.” But that’s no problem for the three county commissioners. By using an obscure real estate doctrine and a recent land purchase they claim to have extinguished the conservation easement, giving themselves the ability to build a compost facility on the land. The commissioners pushed their plan through with a minimum of public notice. 

The 235-page plan is a classic instance of blithe disregard for potential odor issues. It mentions odor only four times:

(1) In the architect’s narrative under “Buildings”, it states that waste will be delivered to a 17,590 square foot “tipping building”: “This building is a fully enclosed, fully contained component of the operation that will minimize odors, provide visual screening, and prevent any leaching of feedstock liquids into the surrounding soil.” 

(2) In the “Operations” section under “Odor control”: “The CASP [“covered aerated static pile”] bunkers have been shown to reduce odors by 90-95% over conventional open pile windrow systems.” 

(3) In the “Proposed Conditions” section under “landscaping: “Newly landscaped areas are strategically located for visual screening and to reduce sound and odor impacts of the facility.” 

(4) And on page 12: “The existing site border of trees creates a natural setback from the road and would provide visual and odor screening.” 

The idea that a line of trees and other landscaping features will reduce and screen odors is laughable. The tipping building may indeed contain odors—as long as the doors are never opened. And once the dumped waste is moved out of the building for composting, the odor issue pops right back up. Finally, even assuming that the claim about CASP bunkers is correct, that residual 5 to 10% of odors may still reach obnoxious levels, especially since the county intends to process “125 million pounds of animal manure, sewage sludge and food waste per year.” 

Yes, that’s right: this is not just a food waste compost pile. It includes massive amounts of animal manure and sewage sludge (i.e., human manure). 

The city of Boulder gives Berkeley, California a run for its money when it comes to progressive politics. Boulder County has a “Zero Waste Action Plan” that aims for a goal of zero waste by 2025. The three county commissioners (all Democrats) seem hell-bent on getting there, even if it means overriding the declared intent of county residents. Will three residents be able to stop the onrushing tide of sludge? Stay tuned. You can track their battle here.

UPDATE March 22, 2021

The Boulder County commissioners caved and will no longer consider placing a composting facility on the open space in question. The county has filed motions to dismiss lawsuits by neighboring property owners. Story here.

On the Radio

Welcome, CBC Radio listeners! Check out the topic tags and have a look around.

The Current host Piya Chattopadhyay and producer Acey Rowe put together a fine episode of their By Design series that turned attention to smell. It's called “Mapping urban smellscapes: Designing cities through scent”, and you can listen to it here.

Kate McLean and Daniele Quercia discuss their mapping of urban smellscapes, and Halifax Chief Planner Bob Bjerke talks about zoning stinky land use. Smell enthusiasts and lovers of liberty would do well to heed his warning about regulating urban smells: “Be careful what you wish for.” His town is notorious for its attempts to outlaw perfume.

Some other thoughts from listening to the broadcast:

Crowd-sourced smell maps with geo-tagged contributions are cool. But what about time-date tagging? How do the mappers distinguish static odors from transient, episodic ones? Is the smelly soul of a city in the occasional bursts or the steady background? Is San Francisco more typical at low tide or high?

Smell regulation is an open invitation to political abuse. Who could object to the smell of a bakery? Answer: activists who object to it using GMO wheat, that’s who.

La Jolla versus Nature: “A Stinky Mess for Too Long”

Massive amounts of stinking guano in a nature preserve finally prompt La Jolla, California, Mayor Bob Filner to go all DefCon3:

Filner issued an Emergency Finding under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, declaring the area a public health hazard. 

The declaration exempts the city from the normal permitting required to clean the state-designated area of “special biological significance,” Filner said.

The city has hired a company to do the cleanup. How will they do it?

Non-pathogenic bacteria will be used to digest bird guano and any smelly organisms it hosts, thereby eliminating the smell coming from the droppings.

Hey, what’s a little bio-engineering of the environment when residents of coastal Blue California get annoyed by endangered species?

Expect backlash from pro-guano environmentalists in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

Oh, and pass the popcorn.

Green on Green: People vs Pelicans

Here at FirstNerve we enjoy watching the contradictions emerge when one form of political correctitude collides with another: wind turbines vs eagles, save-the-whales vs preserving Native American culture, municipal composting vs clean air, etc.

The contradictions in La Jolla, California, are ripe and getting riper as the thick layer of pelican poop and cormorant crap on the town’s seaside rocks grows deeper and smellier by the day. A new AP story updates what we wrote about last year—the protected status of the scenic cove makes guano abatement nearly impossible, yet the unbearable stench is bad for business, tourism, and quality of life in general.

A waiter at a beachside cafe is quoted as saying resignedly, “Poop is a part of nature.” True that. But as the San Diego Union-Tribune pointed out, it is California’s excessive regulatory culture that “effectively sanctifies animal waste.”

California’s love affair with regulatory environmentalism could cause cognitive dissonance headaches. More regulation of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) because the stench of manure from thousands of closely packed animals is an environmental issue? Yes! Take steps to reduce the stench of guano from thousands of closely packed birds because it’s an environmental issue? Yes! Er, no! Uh . . . let me get back to you on that. 

Pass the popcorn.

Don’t Blame the Methane

There is a popular misconception that methane gas is stinky when, in fact, it is almost odorless. Methane (CH₄) is the chief component of the natural gas delivered by your utility company. The company adds an obnoxious sulfur-containing chemical to the product as a warning agent for leaks. People who don’t know better conclude that the methane itself stinks.

The misconception is reinforced in local press reports about odor problems at garbage dumps and landfills. Methane and other gases are generated by bacterial activity as food scraps decompose. However, the rotten smell emerging from the trash heap is not due to the methane, but to other molecules that do stink. Depending on the type of waste and local conditions at the dump, the smell can get pretty intense.

In some landfills the volume of methane is large enough to create a threat of combustion. Then it must be collected via pipes and vented or burned. Sometimes it pays to use it to fuel a steam plant or electrical generator. These systems collect and burn foul-smelling non-methane gases as well, which may make the landfill somewhat less stinky. Then again, it may not.

Now consider yesterday’s headline in the Taunton [Massachusetts] Daily Gazette: “Company vows to eradicate foul odor at Taunton landfill.”

The story, by staff reporter Charles Winokoor, begins this way:

The smell that has elicited complaints from residents living near the city’s landfill should soon be a thing of the past, representatives of a methane gas conversion firm told city councilors Tuesday night. 

“It concerns us as well. We want to fix this,” said Anthony Falbo, senior vice president of operations for Fortistar Methane Group. 

Fortistar has a contract with Waste Management, which manages the city’s landfill. 

Falbo said he and his staff weren’t aware of a growing odor problem until recently, when City Council solid waste committee chairman Daniel Barbour publicly raised the issue.

Fortistar says it will soon add more methane gas extraction wells to those already on site. Yet reading the entire story, it isn’t clear whether Fortistar’s Mr. Falbo or Taunton councilman Barbour are clear on the concept: do they blame the odor on methane or do they just assume that collecting more gas of all types will eliminate the odor problem?

Should the new methane extractors not solve the problem, it’s a question that may come back to haunt the town and its vendors. Clarity now could head of a PR kerfuffle later.

Related: My Green and Stinky posts document the unwillingness of municipal composting operators to come clean about the inherent stinkiness of their facilities. Communities should be better informed and more skeptical about airy claims of odorlessness by all waste management vendors.

The Zen of Drudge

Nuancing the news.

Environmental Regulations Preserve Unbearable Stench in San Diego

The San Diego Union-Tribune editorializes:

The buildup of feces isn’t some saintly natural process that must be allowed to run its course lest there be some terrible consequence down the line. It happened because of a combination of circumstance, climate and official decisions. It’s not part of Mother Nature’s grand scheme for La Jolla Cove or the planet.

The most pungent phrase: California’s excessive regulatory culture “effectively sanctifies animal waste.”

Hunkered Down

 

The lawn furniture is stowed in the garage and the pantry is full of canned beans. There are still a few windows left to tape but otherwise FirstNerve Manor is about as prepared as it’s gonna get.

Let 'er blow!

UPDATE October 31, 2012
Roof on, basement dry. Power on (most of town not so lucky). Internet down (borrowing neighbor's cellular WiFi).

UPDATE November 5, 2012
Power on, power off. Internet spotty. Five hour wait for gas. Know the chief of police? Then zip right to the front of the line. (It's a Jersey thing.) Six days after the hurricane the cavalry arrives in the form of two dozen Entergy utility trucks from Arkansas. Good old boys with accents thick enough to cut with a knife. Within minutes they're up in buckets fixing lines. No power? No problem. Arkansas is on the job.

Our Green Future: Compost-Fueled Cars

Heh. Someone finally pantsed the TED people.

Rude Fungi

A bunch of these have been popping up in what’s left of the garden at FirstNerve Manor. (The entire North Forty is slowing reverting to a state of nature . . .)

The specimen in the photo appears to be a stinkhorn fungus, possibly Mutinus elegans. [It appears to be a dog dick.—Ed.] [Ahem!] More precisely, it’s the mature fruiting body of the fungus. The gelatinous black portion at the tip contains spores and supposedly gives off a fetid odor. It didn’t smell like much to me yet for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to grab one and stick it up close to my nose. There were lots of houseflies on it, however, and they seemed to like it just fine.

The Bodhisattvas of San Diego

The sentient beings of La Jolla have awakened. They have jumped from their surf boards and stepped off their yoga mats, to tread the path of preparation. They seek to right a great wrong.

Stench entrenched: deodorizing Cove will require time, money and bureaucratic buy-in

Yes—through a great act of dharma, they will deodorize La Jolla Cove. To achieve this stainless state, they must pass through the many stages of bhūmi, known from the Steelydana Sūtra by their Sanskrit names

City Park and Recreation Staff
Recreation District Manger
Deputy Director of Developed Regional Parks
San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board
National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
California Department of Fish and Game
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And what is the source of this stench? What misery do the Bodhisattvas of San Diego seek to transcend?

the foul odor caused by pelican, cormorant and sea lion waste at La Jolla Cove

Why? Why do the Enlightened Ones hate nature so?

Eighth Avenue Stink Out

“I know nothing about pigeons,” she said through a closed door where a strong odor of urine was present.

“I don’t care what he says. I’m not feeding nobody,” said Viola, who insisted her only pet is a cat.

Her neighbors beg to differ.

The result is excrement on the building facade and a foul odor that spreads through the sleek Eighth Ave. storefront when the heat or air conditioning kicks on, court papers say.

Images from Google Maps Street View, duh.

So There Is Something in the Water

Always thought so . . .

David Suzuki’s Environmentalist War on Perfume

David Suzuki, a former fruit fly geneticist, is now an aging television celebrity thanks to the government-funded largess of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (where he hosts The Nature of Things). Suzuki is a standard-issue environmental scold. Lately he has trumpeted his harangues from the ramparts of the modestly named David Suzuki Foundation.

Suzuki is also an environmental hypocrite of Al Gore proportions. While he lectures the rest of us on the importance of sustainability he owns a big second home on a large property in a pricey area of Vancouver. He has not one, not two, not three, not four, but five children. During a recent speaking tour, his large diesel bus was left idling during his lectures.

And then there are the little touches: behaving like a douchebag at his own book signings and calling for the jailing of politicians who don’t toe his particular line of climate science. David Suzuki’s smug self-satisfaction did not develop late in life; here is a video of him preening before a bunch of adoring undergraduates in the 1960s. They love it when he compares humans to maggots—wow, man, that’s like, so deep.

How does Suzuki light up our radar here at FirstNerve? Certainly not through his knowledge of smell and odor perception. You Are the Earth: Know the Planet So You Can Make It Better, is a book for elementary school kids that Suzuki co-authored with Kathy Vanderlinden. On page 16 we find this gem of misinformation:

“As the air rushes along the nasal chamber, getting warmed and moistened, it passes the olfactory bulb. This area sends messages to the brain about the odor of the air coming in.

The only way air rushes past your olfactory bulb is if the base of your skull is fractured and your brain is exposed. If Dr. Suzuki doesn’t understand the basic anatomy of olfaction, how far can we trust him on any other smelly topic?

Two weeks ago we were treated to another bit of his patented finger-wagging: an editorial titled "Has your workplace gone fragrance-free yet?" In it, Suzuki and one of his foundation’s
dronescommunication specialists blamed everything from sneezing to cancer on fragrance chemicals—not one of which do they bother to mention by name. (Smear much?)

This latest eco-alarmism is a follow up to last October’s “news story” carried by Suzuki’s ever-obliging enablers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “David Suzuki targets ‘dirty dozen’ toxic ingredients”.

The “news story” is a completely uncritical account of “a chemical survey” conducted by the David Suzuki Foundation. The story quotes from the foundation report, from a foundation spokeswoman, and no one else. The graphic slugged “The Dirty Dozen” is reprinted in full, “courtesy the David Suzuki Foundation.”

You might think a “chemical survey” is carried out by experts in a laboratory with, you know, chemicals. Silly you. The Suzuki survey was conducted online. They posted their “dirty dozen” list—ingredients which the Suzuki Foundation alleges are harmful to humans or “to fish and other wildlife”—and asked people to search for those ingredients in consumer products in their homes. A total of 6,200 people responded with 12,550 products, many of which contained the specified ingredients. All of which proves . . . absolutely fucking nothing.

Suzuki foundation logic runs like this: we think these widely used ingredients are bad; by asking a lot of anonymous people on the internet, we’ve determined that these ingredients are widely used. Therefore they should be banned. Because we think they’re bad.

This is not science. This is not even an argument. This is a seventy-five-year-old man’s tantrum.

David Suzuki is to environmentalism what Hugh Hefner is to sex: a gibbering, dessicated parody kept in the public eye by a compliant media pushing a progressive agenda.

Anchovy Apocalypse

The Joe Jackson-Franck Rouas fragrance deal isn’t the only thing smelling a bit fishy these days. Redondo Beach, California is reeking after a massive fish die-off in the King Harbor basins. Natural causes are suspected—perhaps an algal bloom depleting oxygen levels in the water. Angelinos remain upbeat, as ever:

“Every indication is that this is a naturally occurring event,” a state Fish and Game official said. “It’s just a mess. It’s going to smell for a while, but the city’s doing a great job with the cleanup.”

Photos here and here.

UPDATE March 12, 2011

While oxygen depletion remains the immediate cause of the mass mortality, USC scientists have found high levels of domoic acid in the dead fish, suggesting a role for the algae bloom spotted offshore. The Los Angeles Times reports that more than 35 tons of stinky fish have been pulled from the harbor.

Going Totally Bat-shit

As the days grow shorter and gloomier, we here at FirstNerve Manor amuse ourselves as best we can. One of our favorite pastimes is called “When Worlds Collide.” The fun begins when you find a smelly news story involving a head-on collision between the forces of PC and NIMBY. Then you climb the creaky stairs up to the fourth floor of the northwest belfry, fire up the hibachi, and enjoy some Jiffy Pop while cackling over mankind’s follies .

This evening in the belfry, we’re enjoying the story of Maclean High School in New South Wales, Australia. Seems that 20,000 or so flying foxes—a species of large bat—have descended on the school and are using it as a roost. In doing so, they’re crapping all over the place and creating a vile, ammonia-like stench. They’re also noisy. Students and teachers are at wits end.

So why not chase them off the property? Ahh—they a protected species, you see. They’re endangered, all 20,000+ of them.

But attempts to move the bats have so far been unsuccessful.

The NSW Department of Education, which removed bats 10 years ago, needs a licence and federal government approval to remove them.

[NSW Teachers Federation representative] Ambrose said the federal government had since spent about $30,000 to form a committee to advise the school on how to approach the problem.

He said the initial recommendations, which are yet to be formally accepted, tell the school “to work around the bats”.

“They want us to timetable our classes differently, they don’t want us to do sporting events, they don’t want us to ring our bell, they want us to minimise our voices so we don’t disturb the bats,” he said.

“Work around the bats.” That made the martini come out my nose. Pass the popcorn.

Green and Stinky: UK Biofuel Plant Upsets Locals

Al Gore, call your aromatherapist.

Euphemism alert: According to the BBC, the biofuel company plans to reduce the offending odor by installing “oxidising equipment.” Apparently that’s how the environmentally committed media refer to exhaust stack burners.

Exit question 1: Should a biofuel company buy carbon offsets when it de-smellifies its production line by burning the exhaust?

Exit question 2: Should the people who deal with odor problems at composting facilities and biofuel plants be counted as “green jobs”?

The Wedding Stank

I hate it when this happens. Damn those free-range hens!

Global Wilting: Send Me Dead Flowers by the Mail

You’ve no doubt seen the link; it’s been on Drudge all day: “Flowers ‘losing scent’ due to global warming . . .” I’ve been skeptical about similar headlines, so I looked to see what’s behind this story.

The answer is nothing.

Not one freakin’ fact. No study. No data. No evidence at all.

The story, published without a by-line in the New Straits Times of Malaysia, quotes four people.

One is the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, who delivers a shaggy dog story about the city’s decorative flower beds and why he had to fire the landscape contractor last year. Global warming as CYA memo.

Next up is Professor Abdul Latif Mohamad, an emeritus professor of science and technology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. (Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of UKM either.) 

Latif said UKM might have offered plausible reasons as to why some pollinators were not spreading flower seeds, a pattern caused by the missing “scent trail” with scent tissues burning easily due to global warming.

Hooh boy! Where to begin? First off, pollinators don’t spread seeds—they spread pollen. (This guy’s a professor?) Next, did UKM offer plausible reasons or didn’t it? And forget plausible, how about proof? Evidence for missing scent trails? None. The earth warms—allegedly a couple of degrees on average—and scent tissues are burning? 

Who is this clown?

The aroma producing chemical compounds in flowers dry up faster now compared with before.

Before? Before when? Faster? How fast? No evidence, pure assertion.

But don’t let a lack of evidence get in the way of promoting a major policy recommendation:

The only way out, he said, was to genetically modify the flowers so that the effects would not be permanent and the future generation would not be robbed of nature’s beauty.

Prof. Mohamad then tells his own shaggy dog story about local farmers whose orchards weren’t bearing fruit. His research team looked into the matter and found it was because “dust from a hill blast” had covered the stigmas and prevented pollination.

And how exactly does that implicate global warming?

Batting third is the director-general of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, Dr. Abdul Latif Mahmod. (I know, this gets confusing. Dr Abdul Latif “The Flowers are Burning” Mohamad is this guy. The FRIM’s Dr. Abdul Latif Mahmod is this guy.)

Dr. Mahmod “said recently the extreme weather change might affect the life span of trees as a result of lighter or heavier rain.”

If trees are dying because of too little rain it’s due to global warming. But if they’re dying because of too much rain, then that’s also due to global warming.

Global warming: the all-purpose, non-falsifiable hypothesis.

The story’s final source is Malaysia’s Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Environment. He says that “given the extreme climate changes, every country should work together and not in isolation.”

Translation: All your grant money are belong to us.

One would have thought a little humility was in order among the warmists; that they might be more, uh, temperate in their claims in view of the unfolding scandal of missing and massaged data that threatens their entire policy edifice. Instead, they’ve apparently decided to turn up the volume.

They will say anything to keep the stampede going.

They have no shame.

Exit question: How long before the enviros and legacy media include "loss of flower scent" in their litany of the impending eco-apocalypse?