A Big Stink Is Raised Over Composting Plant : Sewage: Smell from Fallbrook facility where worms convert sludge into fertilizer draws fire from nearby residents.

With its 70 sparkling new homes and tidy lawns, the Cerrita Vista housing development seems like a suburbanite’s paradise.

But it’s really a living hell, residents say, bathed by malodorous breezes that trap neighbors inside their custom homes and send barbecuers screaming for cover.

Around Fallbrook, it’s called “Sewer Hill.”

“The air smells like (feces),” said resident Patsy Filo, who doesn’t use her new patio because of the smell. “It can hit you any time day or night. It travels everywhere.”

After several years of smelling the stink, residents have launched a bitter revolt against the suspected source: an award-winning, worm-driven composting plant operated by the nearby Fallbrook Sanitary District.

Claiming sewer officials have ignored their complaints for three years, the residents initiated a crackdown on the worm plant by presenting their plight to air and water quality agencies.

They also sent letters to lawmakers and the local newspaper to “embarrass” sewer officials, and gathered an anti-odor petition with 150 signatures.

“They promised three years ago to fix it,” Filo said. “We kept trusting them and trusting them. We followed the normal chain of command and it didn’t work. Now it’s got to stop.”

On Wednesday, the stink-weary residents won a major battle. The Air Pollution Control District slapped the sewer district with a public nuisance violation after investigating 25 residents’ complaints.

Although they have not determined whether the odors pose a health hazard, APCD officials gave the sewer district until Nov. 11 to erase or reduce the smell. If it fails, APCD officials said, the composting plant could be ordered to close or pay fines of up to $1,000 a day.

Ironically, the fines would be passed on to the sewer district’s customers, including the residents of Cerrita Vista.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board also investigated the composting operation on Wednesday and vows to “make sure they don’t ignore the problem,” said Bob Morris, the water board’s senior engineer.

What’s happening behind the sanitary district’s gates, not 40 paces from Cerrita Vista, is this: the sewer plant is feeding the solid residue from waste-water treatment to thousands and thousands of worms.

The worms eat half their body weights’ worth of the scum every day and convert it into a prize-winning fertilizer that is sold under the trademark “Vermigro.” Experts say Vermigro is an excellent fertilizer for everything from rose bushes to citrus trees to avocados to shrubs.

The compost operation also cuts sewer bills for the district’s 17,000 customers.

Sewer officials say they earn $84,000 annually for processing Capistrano Beach’s sludge and $100,000 from Vermigro sales. If the odor dilemma closes the money-making composting plant, officials say sewer rates could jump between $20 and $50 a year.

Trying to avoid that, sewer district General Manager Ben Price says his district is methodically mapping a strategy for killing the smell--a repair that could cost millions.

Officials are testing odor-neutralizing agents and wind patterns, and planning to remove 75% of the compost--about 80 truck loads--on Monday to see if that diminishes the smell. They are also negotiating to move the composting plant to the Pala Indian Reservation and have created a 24-hour “odor hot line” to monitor complaints.

Meanwhile, sewer officials are trying to ferret out the precise source of the offending smell from the cornucopia of odors found in a sewer plant. To that end, officials are going door to door this weekend and dropping off labeled samples of various stinking materials to help residents identify the airborne stink.

The stinky samples will help residents “train their noses,” said Price. “To the uneducated palate, all wines taste the same,” he said, drawing an analogy. “If you hang around (the sanitation) industry long enough, you’ll learn that all stinks don’t stink alike.”

The compost, he added, smells “delightful.”

“This is not a gag-a-maggot odor,” he said. “Odors are a matter of personal preference.”

The sewer district is also recruiting residents to serve on an “odor panel.” But that invitation is being widely spurned by residents who doubt the district’s resolve to fix the problem.

Someone even distributed an unsigned flyer around Cerrita Vista urging: “Do not participate in the odor panel. . . Warn your neighbors that the true objective is to ensure the operation of the compost piles continues indefinitely.”

That flyer was countered by another anonymous flyer calling the first group “fanatic publicity seekers.”

“Now the whole world knows we have a problem and would not want to live here. These neighbors are . . . calling us Sewer Hill.”

The sewer district chimed in with its own press release, accusing unnamed residents of trying to sabotage its Vermigro market.

Someone, the release claims, has been calling major Vermigro distributors and claiming that the fertilizer contains “pathogens in the sludge that would harm the children.”

The release also suggests that Filo and Gordon Von Voelker might be manipulating the stink issue for political purposes; both are candidates for the Fallbrook Planning Group.

But Von Voelker says he is the only resident who has agreed to join the odor panel. Sewer officials hope to recruit eight to 10 others.

“We have to go around and smell 15 pits of sludge to determine which pit it’s coming from,” said Von Voelker, an electrical engineer who has sent his vomiting wife into town to flee the odor on several occasions. “I think it’s totally ridiculous. How can you determine if you smell 15 piles of crap which one the smell is coming from?”