Manistee, Michigan - The Victorian Port City
There's that smell again.
Nobody replied the last time I wrote about the sewage-like fragrance that occasionally wafts into town on a south wind, but it's back this morning. My wife, who had been earnestly keeping records for a sympathetic employee of DEQ, was blown off the new employee who replaced him after he was transferred out of the Cadillac office. She was rudely scolded by the city's water treatment guy, to whom she was referred the last time she wanted to draw somebody's attention to the problem, and she has pretty much given up. But this morning, with a brisk breeze out of the south, I"m inclined to believe that the "who stunk up the bathroom" smell wafts here from the county landfill. I know that the smell could be contained, as it is at many other landfills, but nobody here seems to want to put a sock in it.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sandy Saylor on -
Yep, I've smelled it all day long and I still smell it! Yuck! To be honest, I've never noticed it to the extent that I have today.
It is not pleasant.
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Permalink Reply by gary on -
I am doing a persuasion essay on this topic for an English class, at this time I am trying to locate how far into town this smell is actually going. I live in filer twsp south of the gas station, heading towards Ludington, any comments on locations of those that have smelled this odor would be great.
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Permalink Reply by Miracle Max on -
My wife and I can easily smell it from just north of the Manistee National heading into town on Hwy 31, and it's often detectable as far west as Quarterline Road south of County Line. We've smelled it as far away as the First Avenue Beach, to the northeast of where we live.
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Permalink Reply by gary on
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Some blame the dump some blame PCA, cant seem to nail it down. I know the people on Foxfarm have been smelling it for a while now so the dump is more likely then PCA and the poison gas. I looked up some information on DEQ reports and it seems they have been getting some calls for the rotten odor ( dead animal) and some for sour gas suspected from PCA. I think that the DEQ would be the call that needs to be made every time the odor is present and It would have to be made by a lot of people in order for anything to be done.
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Permalink Reply by Pasqwally Stankaciewski on
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You have your own aroma out there.
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Permalink Reply by Miracle Max on
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Whew, the smell kicked in tonight like a big, wet one. Just as I turned from County Line onto Maple.
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Permalink Reply by KRB on -
I have had the same experience and usually in the same area, but this is also true toward the east and crossing county line, or near the Manistee Golf thing on 31. Add to this now, the asphalt plant, which was supposed to be odor free after the tanks were filled. One good thing, you can find manistee even in the dark with your eyes shut. as an aside; the rumble strips near the stop signs are great for my brother who happens to be blind, he says he doesn't miss the stops anymore
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Permalink Reply by Miracle Max on
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I haven't posted to this thread for a while, and it's nice to see a few other nostrils perking up. My wife actually began a one-person crusade to eradicate the odor (pre-asphalt plant), and for several months a helpful DEQ employee had her maintain a journal. He responded as well as he could to her alerts and thought he had nailed at least one source, a storage shed and stowed trucks owned by an environmental clean-up company. But the trucks didn't actually emit odors we could pick up. THE smell persists, although now is often blocked by the rich aroma of roasting asphalt, which may be Manistee's version of a Fabreez air freshener.
Eventually, the cooperative DEQ employee was transferred and replaced by a bureaucrat droid. Inevitable, I suppose. No more assistance was forthcoming.
One morning, the smell being particularly egregious, my wife called the city manager, Mitch, known for his oft-repeated line, "We're looking into that." He sent over the sewage treatment plant manager, who harangued my wife through the window of his city pick-up truck. Apparently, citizens are not to mention the smell. (If the Snooze-Advocate published a medical or police blotter, we'd have read about several elderly people's nose hair being singed that day, but why rile up the natives with useful information.)
I'm a strident libertarian, but I believe other people's liberty should not extend into my lungs. I must say, though, that asphalt emits a less offensive odor than whatever creates the giant farts out there in the woods. I don't think it's PCA. I've been up close many times and not smelled a thing, aside from sawdust. I'm hanging it on the landfill.
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