Judge’s Order a Breath of Fresh Air for Neighbors of Recycling Center

Until the wind picks up, life seems fairly normal on Debell Street in Pacoima.

But wait, the neighbors say, until the breezes change with the approaching cool of evening. That’s when the neighborhood--an island of neat 1950s-era ranch homes just one block away from junkyards, dumps and other small industrial businesses--is invaded by the smell of decaying tree trimmings, plants and grass clippings from a nearby wood recycling business.

On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien ordered the recycling company, Milestone Energy Corp., to put a stop to the stink.

“It smells like chemicals and wet wood,” said resident Juan Calito, who said his family of seven spent the hottest summer in recent memory indoors with all the doors and windows closed. “You can’t breathe with it, and when you are trying to eat, you feel like throwing up.”

The family couldn’t turn on the air conditioning, he said, because that would suck in the stench from outside.

As part of a temporary restraining order issued by O’Brien at the request of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Milestone must now process all trimmings, known in recycling vernacular as “green waste,” within 72 hours of receiving them. The company must remove the waste--which is ground up for sale to companies that use it to make compost and combustible fuel--from the premises within 72 hours after it is processed.

It is the decomposition of waste left heaped in the open that creates the objectionable odor, the participants agreed.

And the company must no longer allow its operations to create dust, which neighbors said sometimes coated their lawns and automobiles.

William P. Dunlap, co-owner of Milestone, with the recycling center’s manager, Jack Krause, called the judge’s order “reasonable.”

“It was bad,” Dunlap admitted. “It really stank.”

Joseph Panasiti, senior deputy district prosecutor for the Air Quality Management District, said there is no evidence that Milestone is releasing any dangerous fumes along with the smell.

Still, he said, if the nuisance isn’t abated, the agency will ask the court to shut down the business until the problem is solved. “We don’t know that it’s toxic, but what we do know is that a lot of people are really miserable,” Panasiti said. “And no business is worth that.”

City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who last week urged residents to call the Air Quality Management District to complain about the smell, agreed. “The next alternative is just to close them down,” said Bernardi, who accused the AQMD of dragging its feet.

According to Dunlap, the odor problem began when the company fell behind in recycling the waste and a 50-foot pile started to decompose. He blamed a broken electrical transformer for the delay, saying some of the decomposing wood, plants and grass had festered on the bottom of the pile for as long as four months.

Dunlap said that in anticipation of a hearing before O’Brien on Wednesday, crews worked around the clock to remove the pile of old waste. From now on, he said, the green waste would be processed quickly, greatly diminishing the smell.

In addition, Dunlap said he planned to build a wall around the property, which he hoped would eliminate the dust and odor.

But neighbors said they were skeptical of Dunlap’s explanation for the smell--and skeptical that the new rules would help alleviate it.

The odor, said longtime Debell Street resident Richard Penter, began in May, as soon as the recycling center began accepting the green waste, not in August, when the transformer broke.

“I’ve had migraines from breathing it,” said Penter, a former plasterer who said he suffers from asbestosis--a lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos--and fears that his lungs will be further strained by breathing by-products of plant fermentation. “And there’s fungus and mold on everything.”

On a recent afternoon on Debell Street, children tossed footballs and baseballs on the little-trafficked asphalt, while three white-haired men stood chatting on the corner of a neighbor’s closely mown front yard.

Maybe, suggested Ernesto Moreno, who was out watering his lawn, the neighbors just have to “re-educate our bodies to accept the bad odor.”

But Frances Torres and her daughter, Sue-Z, didn’t think that was possible. Particularly because the wind was coming up.

“You can really smell it now,” Torres said. “And across the street it smells worse.”