It has been a particularly pungent summer for residents of East Vancouver — people who live in the area have described a stench that has blanketed the area as fishy, comparing the smell to garbage and sewage.
According to Metro Vancouver, that funk is coming from several potential sources nearby, including a poultry processing plant, two seafood processors and West Coat Reduction Ltd., a major rendering plant.
People who live nearby say they burn incense at home or walk in different areas of the neighbourhood to deal with the smells. Some say they’ve just tried to get used to it.
East Vancouver residents say their neighbourhood stinks
While the smell is nothing new, complaints about the intense stink have nearly doubled this year. Metro Vancouver has recorded 883 odour complaints for East Vancouver north of Broadway so far this year, compared to an average of 456 complaints annually over the last five years.
Out of this year’s reports, West Coast Reduction is suspected to be the cause for 357 of them.
The sprawling facility in East Vancouver, the only operation of its kind in British Columbia, renders or processes food waste and animal byproducts like meat and bones from chicken, beef, pork and fish.
Ken Ingram, West Coast Reduction’s director of technical and environmental services, says nothing is left behind.
“The people that produce the meat that goes to the supermarket produce just two products,” he said. “Everything else from that animal has value. That comes to us. We render those and produce proteins that go into feed and pet food, and fats that go primarily into renewable fuel.”
All of this can lead to odours in the air that Ingram says are treated before being expelled.
“If you are cooking in your kitchen you can smell what you are cooking. As the water vapour is coming off, there are other things that are coming off as well. That’s the scent of your fish or your beef,” Ingram explains.
“Ductwork on the roof and around the plant collect those odours. There are 200 places in this facility where we collect that air and take it to odour treatment.”
Treatment includes incineration, which Ingram says destroys organic molecules and associated odours. Heat is transferred to two massive boilers that produce steam that is then used again in the cooking process.
“This is the main odour control. This takes all the air from the cooking processes and machinery, and we have other air scrubbers that take all the air from the room to keep a negative pressure on the building and keep any residual odours within the building and treat it before it goes outside. The air moves through plastic packing that is sprayed with a chlorine solution that disinfects and de-odourizes.”
Despite these efforts, which are regulated by Metro Vancouver, the smell continues to blanket surrounding areas, and can sometimes waft to other parts of the city like the downtown core.
Smell Vancouver is an online application that lets people report various odours throughout the city. Users can rank how strong a smell is, write a description and note any side effects they may be experiencing.
Amanda Giang, lead researcher with Smell Vancouver, says more than 1,300 people used their app this year, a 70 per cent increase from last year.
Most of the reports, she said, came from East Vancouver.
“It’s pretty much a perennial hotspot in our data,” Giang said. “And that’s something that we’ve seen in our past analysis as well, that that’s certainly an area where there are more reports because of that activity.”
But Giang adds other sources for the sour scent — including construction, garbage collection, sewage and algae blooms — should be considered.
Ingram says West Coast Reduction has received more complaints this year, and they respond to each one.
There is a weather system on the roof of the West Coast Reduction facility that records various weather behaviours and data is used to help address each smell complaint.
“We have a weather station that is extremely accurate,” Ingram said. “It allows us to monitor all the weather parameters including wind. And that’s helpful when we get a complaint to determine whether it’s even plausible and then investigate it further in the neighbourhood.”
In a statement, Metro Vancouver says its environmental regulation and enforcement staff assess each complaint and may send staff to an area that is experiencing an odour issue.
“Positively determining a source can be difficult,” the statement said. “Even if officers arrive within 30 minutes of receiving a complaint, air conditions may have already changed.”
