The owners of a large compost pile near Mesick promised to move their commercial composting pile after meeting with irate neighbors on Saturday.
The compost pile is a relatively new operation. Opened early this summer, Northern Composting accepts food waste from Traverse City restaurants, the National Cherry Festival, fast food restaurants and a number of other sources.
The neighbors first got wind of the compost operation in mid-July when Barb Braley and her husband noticed the smell of rotten garbage floating into their home near Mesick. Soon afterward, Braley spotted a dozen turkey vultures circling a giant pile of waste in the field north of her home, less than a quarter mile. She and several neighbors followed their noses to the site.
"We started looking around and there were all kinds of trash from the National Cherry Festival," Braley said. "Backstage passes, plastic cups, plastic spoons, knives, forks, plates, lids, straws and hamburgers. Piles of hamburgers."
But to the guys who owned this property, this wasn’t trash. It was a compost pile. And in fact many of those plastic-looking cups, plates and utensils are biodegradable, the ones that came from the Cherry Festival anyway.
Josh Olds, co-owner of Northern Composting, concedes he made some early mistakes. For one, he accepted too much plastic when he first opened for business earlier this summer.
"This pile you see here is some of the original material that came in and it definitely had some plastic contaminant," he said. "We weren’t very happy with it and we did have some trouble at first securing a carbon material, which was the source of any smell you may have smelled. But again, we weren’t aware we were bothering anybody or we would have made changes much quicker."
Olds spoke to eight neighbors, who gathered at the compost site this past weekend in an impromptu, let’s-have-it-out kind of meeting. The neighbors said the stench was bad all summer--so bad they couldn't barbeque outside.
Olds told the crowd he’s made a lot of changes since he was contacted by the DEQ about neighbor complaints. To make the compost more aerobic, or "hotter," he's added sawdust to the piles and is turning over the piles over more often. He also put up snow fencing to stop flying debris.
Neighbor Paul Smith wasn’t impressed.
"It’s not a compost. It contains garbage. Period!" said Smith, the most outspoken of the group.
Smith pointed to the plastic bags, animal bones, a metal fork, and a broken test tube littering the pile. That stuff doesn’t go back to nature, he said.
"You asked a question earlier. If we were opposed to it, why didn’t we say anything?" he said to Olds. "Let’s reverse the question. If we’re going to start a garbage or a landfill, wouldn’t you contact the neighbors first to see if that would be on the game plan instead of waiting until it gets to the point where we got vermin, we got hawks, we got eagles up here? They’re going to end up dying because of this."
Smith demanded they put a liner on the site like they do in landfills. But Olds explained that compost sites don’t need a liner. Waste breaks down into a valuable soil amendment. That’s the whole point of his business.
"It’s recycling. It’s sustainable. It could create jobs if it actually took off," Smith said. " ... Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Jobs in Mesick, Michigan."
The neighbors weren't sold on the job idea and ultimately threatened a "class action lawsuit." Co-owner Brandon Sang countered with a proposal: they’ll stop adding food to the compost pile and relocate the piles by spring.
"If this is what the community is feeling we’ll just take it somewhere else," said Sang, later adding that they were thinking of an alternate location anyway.
"That's a good idea," Smith responded.
Neighbors were elated, but Olds was disappointed since they'd made significant progress in fixing the problems.
Is composting a growth industry?
The bigger issue is regulation.
Environmental Quality Specialist Duane Roskoskey said the DEQ lacks the time or money to routinely visit compost sites—even the large ones that compost yard waste and must be registered. But it will respond to complaints about air and water quality, as well as nuisance animals.
In this case, DEQ Geologist Jim Staley visited Northern Composting on July 24 and wrote an Aug. 8 letter. He required the owners provide a work plan to make the composts "aerobic," and remedy the odor and vulture problems.
The DEQ received a work plan from Northern Composting on Sept. 8, said Staley, who's based in Cadillac's Office of Waste of Management. Staley said it's the biggest compost operation he's seen in the district, which covers northwest Michigan.
Roskoskey suggested that townships set up special use permits to gain greater control. But Wexford Township Supervisor Dave Williams, who was also at the site on Saturday morning, wants strong environmental oversight too.
"They have to be taken care of and somebody has to watch over them," Williams said. You know they can’t just be out there to make a little extra money. We don’t’ seem to have anybody out there who wants to regulate them. That’s our problem. I won’t mention any names."
Ironically, the DEQ is trying to promote composting by connecting food producers to haulers to composters. That's because food waste is the single biggest contributor into Michigan landfills, Roskoskey said.