The state’s stay-at-home order forced Minnesotans outside for exercise and fresh air. In South St. Paul, sometimes that led to crinkled noses.
With residents enjoying the outdoors and staying close to home, the city has been seeing a “major uptick” in the number of complaints of foul air wafting across town, according to City Planner Michael Healy.
Although the origins were not officially verified by the city, remnants from the city’s shuttered stockyards — Sanimax USA, Twin City Hide, Twin City Tanning and Long Cheng Hmong Livestock & Meat Processing Plant — and the city’s compost site have been blamed in past years.
A city ordinance — enacted in 2014 and believed to be the only one of its kind in Minnesota — is not curtailing the stench, officials and residents say. So last week the city council amended the local law to give it more “teeth” to hold odor producers that do not want to work with the city accountable.
City Council Member Joe Kaliszewski said clearly something more needed to be done. He said he got a whiff of “a gross violation” of the ordinance on a recent Saturday.
“It actually made you walk outside and curl up your nose and go, ‘Oh my God.’ But I’ve lived in this town my whole life and grew up down in the stockyards and I know what that smell is,” Kaliszewski said.
CHANGE EMPOWERS THE CITY
The main revision to the city code is the addition of “Track 2” that officials could use when a business refuses to address its odor issue. The change empowers the city to start issuing administrative citations to the business immediately by following the standard procedure for code violations.
Under the process, there will be one warning letter followed by an administrative citation for the second violation. Citations start at $200 and double for each subsequent citation before maxing out at $2,000 per violation.
City Attorney Peter Mikhail said the language of the ordinance does not require proof of a verified complaint.
“It’s not part of our standard odor prohibition that exists in our community and pretty much every other that prohibits you from emitting obnoxious and offensive odors,” Mikhail said. “The benefit, of course, of having independent data verified by SEH (the city’s on-call odor consultant) is a matter of proof. But these regulations apply at all times.”
According to SEH data, Sanimax — an animal rendering plant — had 17 days between April 4, 2019 and Sept. 11, 2019, where it generated foul odors in excess of “7 odor units.” If the new ordinance would have been in place then, the company would have been given one warning and then issued 16 administrative citations that would have totaled $27,000 in fines.
Sanimax attorney Stephan Nickels told the city council during Monday’s meeting and in an emailed letter that the company objects to the ordinance change. In the email, he said it is “ambiguous, and it unfairly targets Sanimax.”
“The City continues to go after this long-standing and successful business,” he wrote. Sanimax processes meat byproducts, hides and used cooking oil into animal feed and biofuels.
YEARS OF DISPUTE
Sanimax and South St. Paul have been at odds for years.
The company sued South St. Paul in 2017, asking the court to rule that the city’s odor ordinance is “unconstitutionally void for vagueness” and that the city’s use of a Nasal Ranger olfactometer device that measure “odor units” in the air violates Sanimax’s due process rights.
City officials said they first found that Sanimax’s plant at 505 Hardman Ave. was in violation of the odor ordinance in 2015 but decided not to take action because the company had plans to install new systems to reduce odors.
However, odor testing in late 2015 and in June 2016 showed Sanimax exceeded the threshold for being a significant generator, according to the city. The company dropped the lawsuit after the city council amended the ordinance by specifying the testing threshold and the olfactory testing device.
BACK IN COURT
And now Sanimax and South St. Paul are tangling in court once again.
Late last week, the company filed a complaint against the city in U.S. District Court arguing the city’s zoning amendment passed in November unfairly targets the rendering facility, which has operated in the same location for more than 50 years.
Sanimax alleges they are being targeted unfairly by city rezoning aimed at steering out “historical” heavy industrial businesses and ushering in light industrial uses.
The new zoning area prohibits 21 land uses, including asphalt and concrete plants, junkyards, petroleum refineries, mining, slaughterhouses and — to Sanimax’s objection — the processing of grease or organics into byproducts, and the rendering, reclaiming and processing of animals or meat byproducts.
Mikhail has said that businesses such as Sanimax that now have a non-permitted use because of the new zoning can continue to operate. However, they are not allowed to expand on the property.Mikhail said last week the lawsuit is “without legal merit” and the city “will vigorously defend its laws.”
“The disputed ordinance is a perfectly normal zoning regulation that state law authorizes and encourages,” he said. “And the law does not apply just to Sanimax; it applies to all the land in the zoning district, whether the current use is industrial, vacant or other.”
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Stench persists in South St. Paul — and so does the conflict between the city and a longtime business - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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