Officials Say Ventura’s Stew of Odors Is Not Unusual, but Many Are Raising a Stink About the Stench

When the wind is calm and the air humid, the scent of this fair city can wrinkle the nose.

Or at least in certain sections of the community. Sometimes. Just a bit.

But city officials say not to worry. That’s just the way Ventura smells.

Downtown property owner Andy Chakires said an odor--part sewer and part natural gas--has permeated parts of Ventura in recent weeks.

Mind you, 73-year-old Chakires says his sense of smell isn’t what it used to be. But people who rent retail space from him on East Main Street tell him they have noticed the unsavory aroma.

One of those tenants is Ingrid Schuh, owner of the gift store Follow Your Dream in the 400 block of East Main. Schuh said she followed her nose about two weeks ago and wondered if a sewer pipe had cracked. It hadn’t.

Then Chakires’ handyman detected the smell wafting near the beachfront Holiday Inn. A local real estate agent noticed the traveling stench at the corner of Main and California streets.

And another Chakires tenant, Audrey Gaffney, said her husband recently has caught the smell drifting by the couple’s candy store, Atelier de Chocolat, on the same block. “We’ve been here 10 years, and this is the first time either of us noticed anything like this,” she said.

Chakires worries this trend could mean trouble.

“If there’s a persisting odor I don’t think people would want to go into the area,” Chakires said. “They wouldn’t want to shop there.”

Perhaps, he speculated, the smell comes from construction downtown, where a 10-screen movie theater and parking garage are being built.

Not so, assure city officials. Instead, it’s a variety of sources that combine to produce a “soup or stew of odors” at certain times under certain conditions, said Deputy City Manager Steve Chase, acknowledging that people do raise a stink from time to time about weird smells.

“You’ve got a lot of stuff that smells in our environment,” he said.

Sources Chase cites include the Pictsweet Mushroom Farms and two waste-water treatment plants, all near Ventura Harbor; farm fields; onshore and offshore oil and gas deposits; and residue of Ventura’s oil boom lying on the ground.

At the end of November, you can add the smell of chicken manure, Chase said. Complaints from residents pour in every year about that time when local farmers apply manure to their fields, he said.

Chase has a philosophical perspective. His advice, in a nutshell: Deal with it.

“The issue is life goes on,” he said. “Seek a balance between what naturally exists and your urban environment. And at the end of the day, wish your neighbor well.”

Schuh was not pleased with the explanation.

“I certainly like to hear that,” she said sarcastically. “With business such as it is, we certainly don’t want to discourage more people from coming to Ventura.”

But Bill Clawson, executive director of the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau, said he hasn’t heard any complaints from tourists.

“Our city doesn’t stink,” he said, while conceding he can sometimes smell the mushroom farm from his Ventura Keys home. “And we really don’t want any word to get out about it because we don’t want people imagining it.”

Correspondent Brenda Loree contributed to this article.