'Noxious Odors' Would Be Investigated Under Senate Bill
Submitted by Nevada News Bureau on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 4:00am
By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Legislators were asked yesterday to imagine an odor so rancid and vile that it requires evacuating the Legislature.
“You would not be able to work in this building,” Donna German, who lives near Fallon, told legislators at a Senate committee.
That is the type of stench residents near Fallon say they have lived with for years.
Sen. Mike McGinness, who represents the residents, has sponsored a bill to try to get some relief for his constituents.
Several of those constituents testified that a nearby oil-recycling plant is the source of the acrid stench. Some encouraged legislators to sniff the odor, a vial of which was in a car of a UNLV professor who had studied the issue.
Lobbyists from that oil-recycling plant, owned by Bango Oil, contended that independent, third-party tests have confirmed that their plant produces no odors that would spread hundreds of miles away.
Michael Elges, chief of the Bureau of Air Pollution Control at the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, said he has been to the site several times.
“Much like any industrial facility I’ve been to, there are odors associated with the products, systems and chemicals used,” he said.
He noted, however, that he has not noticed a similar smell in the nearby countryside.
Many groups testified against the bill.
“We are here to oppose the bill,” said Doug Busselman of the Nevada Farm Bureau. “We are not here to contend that the folks from Fallon are not having a problem. We are just here to contend that this bill is not the solution to this problem.”
Local governments from Washoe and Clark Counties asked to be exempt from the bill, saying its investigation requirements would force them to hire up to five new employees to chase after odor complaints.
Many said that the definition of a “noxious odor” was too broad.
The bill’s text states that a noxious odor “is objectionable to the senses of an ordinary person and interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property in any usual place of occupancy.”
The bill would place mandates on local governments to carry out investigations, hearings and issue written notices to people allegedly causing foul odors, lobbyists said.
The Senate Committee on Natural Resources took no action on the bill.
