News Photo by Julie Riddle North side residents Landon Sims, 3, and Easton Sims, 2, stand on their front porch, across the street from the main entrance to Decorative Panels International in Alpena on Tuesday.

ALPENA — Last week’s censure of an Alpena business’s bad smells follows at least two other stinky situations at the business noticed by state inspectors in recent years.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s Air Quality Division last Tuesday tagged lagoons at Decorative Panels International as causing smells it labeled as objectionable and resembling sewer odors and “hot, rotting cooked cabbage.”

Residents near the business have demanded the city and the state take action, and the Alpena Municipal Council is considering possible litigation against DPI because of the smells.

DPI has faced such criticism from the state before, with smell-related violation notices issued in 2019 and again in 2021, when the business battled a mound of wet sludge that smelled like manure.

Reports from the state website detail DPI’s efforts to get rid of the sludge and accompanying smell in 2020 and 2021.

Other smells, described as burnt or sweet wood, have no source that they can find, the company said in response to past complaints.

DPI has until August 23 to reply to the state’s violation notice. As of Tuesday evening, that reply did not appear on the state’s website that shares documents related to air quality enforcement.

“Our team is working towards resolving the issue urgently,” said Daryl Clendenen, DPI general manager at its Toledo headquarters, in an emailed statement to The News.

The state’s violation notice does not specify what steps the state will take if DPI does not adequately address the smell problem.

In an emailed comment, EGLE spokeswoman Jill Greenberg said that “there are further actions that EGLE can take if the problem is not addressed,” but did not elaborate.

In response to a question asking how EGLE makes sure businesses actually make changes instead of simply paying a fine, Greenberg said the state’s air quality division “has a thorough and robust process for ensuring the industry complies with applicable air regulations. This includes unannounced inspections, timely complaint investigations, and an enforcement process when appropriate.”

Alpena resident Jessica Harrison, who lives across the street from the main entrance to DPI, said DPI is driving residents away.

She is thinking of selling her five-bedroom home, where she has lived for two years, because of the smells, noise, and residual wood flakes from the company’s stacks that coat her car every morning.

Recent bad smells make her worry about sending her children, including 3-year-old Landon and 2-year-old Easton, into the yard to play, Harrison said.

She feels confident she’ll be able to sell the house “to people that didn’t know, like me,” she said. “Until they lived here for a little bit and wanted out.”

Clendenen said DPI has extended help to city administration to get the current smell problem resolved.

“For more than 65 years, DPI has been a proud member of the Alpena community,” Clendenen said. “The convenience and safety of the residents of the community is of prime importance to us. Over the last several years, we have been consistently investing in the plant efficiency and will continue to do so.”

SLUDGE PILE STINK

Those investments include hundreds of thousands of dollars invested to repair machinery after a growing pile of wet sludge, created by the company’s production process, caused a stink that sparked another citation from the state last year.

In June of 2021, in an odor survey prompted by complaints, inspectors found “distinct and objectionable” manure odor detectable at least four blocks away, according to a violation notice.

The company had stated it intended to remove the sludge by July 4, a month after the violation notice.

The intensity of the smell called for faster action, the state said.

In its reply to that violation notice, DPI asked that the state provide a copy of residents’ complaints about the smells.

When a wastewater treatment plant at DPI — which used the sugars in DPI’s wastewater to make agricultural molasses — closed unexpectedly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s pile of sludge became a problem, DPI explained in its response letter.

The company discovered that the machinery used to dry the sludge had fallen into disrepair. Supply-chain delays meant the $300,000 in parts the company ordered to fix the sludge dryer didn’t come for months.

When the company had to shut down the dryer completely for three weeks in March 2021 for repairs, its pile of wet sludge grew, the resultant stink compounded by unseasonably warm temperatures of an early spring, the company told the state.

As the company removed the sludge, trucks full of smelly materials had to travel through a residential area, forced to take that route because of construction, the company said.

In the week before the complaints started, the company was moving more than triple its usual amount of sludge to the landfill, trying to remove as much odor as possible by the July holiday weekend.

Though the state had asked for faster action, DPI officials said the company, its contractor, and the landfill accepting waste were working at capacity. By the time they figured out where else to take the sludge or how to get it there, the job would be done, DPI said.

SWEET AND SOUR WOOD

As in the current violation, last year’s violation notice also noted offensive woody smells, which air quality inspectors described as “sweet” or “burnt.”

No malfunction or other factor on the DPI campus offered a plausible explanation for such a smell to the degree that it would be noticeable and offensive to residents, DPI said.

Last year’s complaint followed a 2019 violation notice from the state, also attributing an offensive wood odor — which it described as both sweet and intensely sour — to DPI’s operations.

The company could find no cause for odors detected by air quality staff and could take no actions to correct the alleged violations, it said in a response letter that year.

The hardboard manufacturing process has generated odors since the company began operation on the site in the 1950s, with an extensive analysis of the source of the smells conducted in the 1990s, the letter said.

While the company said it questioned whether the smells that generated complaints in 2019 actually interfered unreasonably with any resident’s enjoyment of life or property, it pledged to work with air quality officials to address odors coming from the Alpena plant.

EGLE takes all complaints seriously, Greenberg, the EGLE spokeswoman, said.

“When concerns arise, like the objectionable odors some residents are experiencing in Alpena,” EGLE staff investigates, she said. “This is an important part of holding a company accountable and fixing the problem as soon as possible.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.