Sleuths are on the case of Milpitas’ stinking problem

MILPITAS — It’s no big secret that Milpitas stinks.

Bay Area motorists who pass through the city know it. So do residents who have been putting up with the smell for decades.

Nearby Newby Island — where Republic Services runs a landfill and recycling/composting operation — long has been considered the source of the city’s notorious odors.

Now, in an effort to finally get to the bottom of stenchgate, the city is going to pour $85,000 on a pilot odor monitoring program. The mission is to gather data about the odors, where they come from and whether they affect health and air quality.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is planning its own year-long study on the stink, hoping to learn what kind of chemical compounds are causing it and who’s responsible, so stricter regulations can be devised to limit it.

“Our city needs to step up and move forward with odor monitoring,” Milpitas Mayor Rich Tran said in an interview in the wake of the City Council’s Feb. 26 approval of the pilot program.

Although he’s glad the air quality district also is studying the problem, Tran said he doesn’t want to “sit back and wait.”

“There is no price to the public health of tens of thousands of Milpitians,” said Tran, whose major-re-election campaign talking points last year included putting a stop to the odors.

Milpitas Public Works Director Tony Ndah said pilot program details are still being fleshed out but likely will include mounting a series of odor monitoring devices around the city and sending out temporary workers equipped with handheld monitoring devices to “do some sniffing.”

“So if there’s anything we can do about (the smell), then we would do something about it,” Ndah said. “We don’t have any plans in the works, but anything to just help the situation.”

Wayne Kino, a deputy air pollution control officer for the air quality district, said stopping the persistent smell isn’t as simple as it might seem. “It has historically been kind of a smelly area,” he said.

In addition to Newby Island, Kino said the odors also could be coming from nearby facilities such as the San Jose-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility, which operates a series of sewage drying pools, and an anaerobic organic material digestion facility owned by Zanker Recycling. All of those facilities previously have been cited by the air district for violating their operating permits or for causing a public nuisance by releasing odors, Kino said.

District staff says some progress has been made in dissipating the foul smells by having inspectors trace residents’ odor complaints to the offending facilities and working with operators to change their habits.

For example, Republic Services was cited by the district for what Kino called “careless” operations in the area where trucks go to dump trash, recyclables and green waste for initial sorting.

By requiring the company to sort the materials in a partially enclosed facility and not outside, Kino said the smell has diminished significantly. The district meanwhile is working on new rules requiring Republic to completely enclose the sorting facility and install an effective air filter .

District spokeswoman Kristine Roselius said that kind of work is paying off, reflected in the falling number of odor complaints lodged by residents, which peaked at 3,500 in 2015. The number decreased to 2,800 in 2016, then to 1,700 in 2017 and next to 1,500 last year, according to the district.

But despite those strides, the area still reeks, Kino said.

“What happens down in Milpitas is if you solve one problem … another odor that’s kind of laying low below that odor comes to the surface and presents itself,” Kino said. For example, after the district enforced changes at the Newby sorting facility, the focus of complaints started switching to Republic’s composting operations.

“There’s a commingling of odors in the area, and that’s a challenge for us,” said Tracy Lee, a compliance manager with the district.

“So as we begin to improve and mitigate odors from certain sources and certain operations, then you’re going to smell a different kind of odor,” she said.

Kino said past odor studies have relied too much on panels of human sniffers, whose interpretations of smell can vary widely. This study will take advantage of newer odor analysis and detection technology and last at least a year, to account for seasonal operations at the facilities as well as changing weather patterns.

“We’re going to go to facilities, go to suspected odor sources … and actually through lab-grade analytical procedures to try and determine whether that odor source is coming from a particular source at the facility or the facility itself,” he said.

“We’re going to try to correct as we find it (odors),” he said. “Say Republic is doing something or we find a portion of odors coming from them, we’re going to be working with them to get that eliminated.”

While the district is optimistic the study will identify smell sources and Tran has expressed “full confidence” in the city’s parallel efforts, Kino noted the area’s residents will be the ultimate judges.

“People are going see results, well, smell results with their noses,” he said.