ONE’S MANURE IS ANOTHER’S SMELL... I got two phone calls last Friday about an “awful smell” near the “S” curves on Coloma Road Friday morning.
The first caller had plenty of information, including that the smell had been around for some time and that it was “more than cow manure,” that calls had been made to state officials, and the caller even got me to promise to go for a look myself.
I jokingly said if it smelled that bad I would wait until after lunch.
Not too long after that I got another call from another citizen in that area. The caller said the odor the day before has been so bad some neighbors had been confined to their house.
At that, I headed to the area at about 11:00 a.m.
Near the “S” curves, I got an occasional “whiff” of something smelly but nothing strong enough to keep me in the house or to roll up my car windows.
I drove toward Riverside but really smelled nothing past Bessemer Road. I went back east, turned onto Boyer Road, and took Boyer Road all the way to Red Arrow. I turned around and went back to Coloma Road, again smelling nothing.
Nothing, that is, until I turned east onto Coloma Road.
The pungent smell of something rotten hit my olfactory nerves like nothing ever before. The odor was as strong as a skunk’s on the back porch, but heavier and “sweeter.”
The smell went right to my eyes and to the back of my throat. All I wanted to do was to get away from it. I drove east a bit and pulled over into a cannery parking lot to get my breath back and to consider what I had smelled.
Just at the same time, a friend drove by, headed right for the packet of stench.
He “two-wayed” me on his cell phone to asked why I was parked alongside the road.
Just as he did, he exclaimed, “Holy cow! What is that smell?”
I told what I knew. Later that day, he reported that the smell never left his vehicle until he was nearly to Benton Harbor.
The information I got was that some 30 truckloads of “fertilizer” had been dumped on a nearby farm more than three weeks ago.
Coloma City officials were aware of the smell and had referred the complaints to Coloma Township officials because the acreage is in Coloma Charter Township.
The farmer had been “ordered’ to plow the offending materials under immediately went the smell first began bothering the neighborhood.
The plowing under began early this week after other complaints were made to the Township, the Michigan Department of Agriculture, and the DEQ and EPA. A neighbor out there said the situation was improving rapidly.
As someone at the Township reportedly told a complainant, “Farmers have a right to farm and they have a right to fertilize.”
That being said, from firsthand experience of only a few minutes in dealing with the smell, that “neighbors” would have to deal with it for such a long period of time has to have been a public nuisance at the least to perhaps a serious health hazard.
Every “rural” community has to deal with situations that bring agriculture into conflict with residential living; including smell and waste issues. Anyone living in a rural area better is at peace with that. Even so, when agriculture infringes on the rights of all citizens to breathe air uncontaminated with animal waste, it is up to local officials to take immediate and decisive action.
