Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- A stench that hung over the busy intersection of Trunk Road and Palmer-Wasilla Highway most of last month was described as "overpowering," "gagable" and "obnoxious."

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The odor was apparently emanating from pile after pile of steaming compost recently dumped in a former potato field behind Evergreen Landscaping & Nursery, a business that opened on the corner last summer.

"Some mornings, it was pretty gagable," said Justin Weisz, store manager at the nearby Three Bears discount grocery. Weisz said it was worst in the early mornings when he arrived at the store.

Krazy Beans Espresso owner Rochelle MacKenzie said the smell drove customers away.

"They were unhappy with us. First of all, people were saying 'You really need to get your outhouse cleaned,' " MacKenzie said.

But it wasn't the outhouse. Nor was spilled milk the culprit, or something rank in the holding tank, MacKenzie said. The coffee shack got a good scrubbing, but the smell remained. Then a customer asked what was going on with the steaming piles of manure west of the coffee stand, and MacKenzie and her crew realized they weren't causing the smell.

A mix of horse manure and "green waste" like grass clippings and leaves, the compost was apparently hauled to the Valley from South Anchorage -- about 30 dump-truck loads, the borough estimates. Evergreen owner Jeff Dinwiddie had amassed the compost, for a fee, on a 7-acre parcel near Huffman Road.

Steve Morris, air quality manager for the Municipality of Anchorage, said Dinwiddie had a big compost pile there, perhaps 15 feet high and 20 feet wide. The city got calls about the smell from residents in the area in September, Morris said. He gave Dinwiddie until Oct. 24 to get rid of the smell.

"It seemed to us that it was clearly a foul odor," Morris said.

A few weeks later, Mat-Su residents were calling the borough to complain about a foul odor too. Kendra Johnson, a code compliance officer for the borough, said she spoke to Dinwiddie about the smell on Halloween. When the piles weren't gone five days later, she issued citations.

Dinwiddie is challenging the citation for keeping "animal waste or other putrescible wastes ... and creating a public health hazard." He's also challenging a citation for failing to get permission when he changed the use of the property from agricultural activity to a commercial business. Both are $300 fines.

Dinwiddie was out of state Thursday and did not return a message left at his other business, Alaska Trailblazing.

Cook Inlet Region Inc., the Anchorage regional Native corporation, owns the 150-acre potato field. Jim Jager, company spokesman, said CIRI has a month-to-month lease with Dinwiddie. Until a reporter called Thursday, his company didn't know anything about the compost piles, he said.

"If in fact there is an illegal situation, we're not going to allow it to continue," he said.

Whatever happens with these piles, the manure problem is a bigger issue plaguing Anchorage, Morris and Anchorage sustainability director Randy Virgin said. After the Point Woronzof composting facility closed last winter, the city has lacked a good place for horse owners and others to offload manure or grass clippings.

Morris said Dinwiddie's compost drop-off was picking up the slack, but is no longer. Virgin said it's a problem city leaders hope to work out before spring, when the situation could approach a crisis level.

Morris credited Dinwiddie for complying with the city's request so quickly and said he "didn't intend to create a problem for Mat-Su."

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her in Wasilla at 907-352-6709.

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