New plant fails the smell test

Forty miles from the sweet pine scents of Yosemite Valley, the national park’s garbage is contributing to a royal stink.

In this little town on the west Sierra slope, a gleaming new composting plant is busy converting trash from Yosemite and the rest of Mariposa County.

Sam Spaulding, who lives just above it, said there are days when it reeks like a dead animal. Other times it’s like sewage.

Spaulding said he doesn’t mind the park depositing its biodegradables practically in his backyard, but “sometimes it’s so strong up here it burns your eyes. After this thing got going -- pee-u-wee!”

When the $8-million composting operation opened next to Mariposa’s landfill last year, Mariposa County officials praised it as an innovative, green-minded solution to the region’s growing garbage disposal needs. Environmentally sensitive composting seemed perfect for a region that depends on tourist traffic heading up California Highway 140 to one of America’s most beloved national parks.

Composting also fit the environmental ethos at Yosemite, which has an award-winning recycling program to divert cans, bottles and tons of other reusable materials from its trash.

As boosters envisioned it, the new plant would slash the volume of garbage by half and produce enough compost to eliminate any need for the costly 1,000 dump trucks of dirt brought in each year to blanket the landfill.

But now, as neighbors complain about odors much worse than from the old landfill, county sanitation and health officials are scrambling for answers.

“We have a vocal minority, but they’re very vocal,” said Dana Hertfelder, the county’s public works director. “They never have been in favor of it, and the odor problem has given them something to grab on to.”

Yosemite officials say they are eager to see a remedy.

In the old days, the park operated dumps right in the valley. Rangers used to make a show of feeding bears at the Curry Village garbage pit. But after World War II, Yosemite started sending its trash to the Mariposa landfill. Most years, trash from the park accounts for about 40% of the dump’s refuse stream.

The park and other federal agencies provided most of the money to build the new plant, a near twin of a composting operation outside Yellowstone National Park.

And they’re watching.

“The composting facility is not working as well as it should be,” park spokesman Scott Gediman said.

Sanitation officials say the plant’s odor problem appears to stem from the idiosyncrasies of trash disposal in Mariposa County.

Residents of the rural region used to simply burn their trash in empty 55-gallon oil drums. But that pioneer-style practice fell to the state air board’s regulatory rules a few years back. Because the county has never offered municipal garbage collection, most residents took to loading household waste in pickups for routine dump runs.

Unfortunately, that flood of rubbish -- 14,000 tons a year -- is not the stuff of which good compost is made.

Outside of Yosemite, most residents don’t bother to recycle. Instead, they send a blizzard of empty soft-drink bottles and other plastics into the plant’s eight concrete-walled composting vessels.

The result is a malodorous mix.

Hertfelder, the public works chief, is optimistic that a little public education on the merits of recycling can help the county’s composting cause.

Meanwhile, plant managers have fixed a balky biofilter that wasn’t properly sifting out the smell and installed a deodorizing spray system.

If the remedial steps don’t reduce the stench, there’s talk of enclosing -- at an additional cost of $200,000 -- the portion of the plant where the finished compost is stored outside.

“I do believe we’ll get the odors under control,” Hertfelder said. “As much as Ruth gets mad at me, it is a landfill, and trash does have an odor.”

Hertfelder was referring to Ruth Sellers, a well-known Mariposa civic player who lives in a tidy ranchette across California 49 from the plant.

During planning stages a few years back, Sellers was among the plant’s most vocal opponents; she would have preferred that the county find a new dump far out of town. An inveterate Republican, Sellers also objected to county leaders taking pricey junkets to tour composting plants.

That was then, and the smell is her main concern now.

“What’s coming out of there isn’t compost. It’s garbage,” she said. “They’re speeding up the rotting, is all.”

By building the plant, Mariposa is catering to the wishes of Yosemite, Sellers added. “We’re put at a disadvantage for the benefit of the park.”

Not all of her neighbors want to criticize Yosemite, which they know is a prime draw for tourist dollars.

“If Yosemite wasn’t there, we wouldn’t get any business,” said Mike Butler, an auto mechanic who has lived all of his 45 years on a hill overlooking the landfill. “My problem is with that composting plant. It’s a white elephant.”

Last Thanksgiving, the odor reached such putrid proportions that Butler’s mother canceled the usual feast at her trailer on the family property. Sometimes, he said, the smell seeps in under the door.

Up the road, Spaulding, who carves tombstones, says the foul smell has chased off one of his employees who became nauseated from it.

Three times in recent months, Spaulding lamented, customers shopping for headstones turned tail and left, complaining about the stink. “Probably lost $3,000 in business,” he said.

eric.bailey@latimes.com