Residents in Shawnee are complaining after they say the smell coming from Deffenbaugh landfill has gotten out of hand.
“Rotten sewage” and “garbage” are some of the ways they are describing the smell.
According to residents, the smell started getting particularly bad late last year.
Heavy rain fall in during the late spring and summer is being blamed for the smell.
Landfill officials say moisture from all the rain led to trash decomposing faster, leading to an awful smell.
Numbers provided by the Shawnee government show complaints about the landfill skyrocketed towards the end of 2015.
From January to September last year, there were 28 complaints dealing with the landfill. From October to December, when residents say the smell started getting bad, residents filed 138 complaints.
“It smells like a sewer lagoon,” explained Jeff Arnold, who has lived near the landfill for five years.
Arnold says the smell has never been worse than now, and he hopes leaders do something about it soon.
“It's going to make a big difference in the price of our house,” he said. “It's going to make a big difference when we bring people over."
Arnold said friends and family members often bring up the smell when they visit his house.
Waste Management, which operates the site, responded to the complaints. A spokesperson said the company is focusing on building new gas extraction wells and pipes to help with the smell.
She added that it will take two to three weeks before the additions are completed.
In a statement, the company said:
“We acknowledge that an increase in landfill gas generation due to above normal rainfall has resulted in odors from Johnson County Landfill and controlling odors is a priority for us. We apologize for the situation but we are taking aggressive steps to control the odors and continue to update our progress to neighboring communities.
Since we received approval from KDHE on January 12 to expand the landfill gas collection at the site, we have installed 22 of 32 gas extraction wells, new gas collection piping and a new flare. We are in process of completing the well installation and connecting the wells to the new flare.
The additional wells will allow us to place a vacuum on the waste disposal area and pull the landfill gas to the flare thereby controlling the odors.
This construction project will take approximately 2 to 3 weeks to complete.”
