Minutes - Council - 05/11/2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Public Works Director Kapler replied the monitoring was always done downwind. It was done a couple of times from Mr. Hamilton's and as far back as 141st Avenue. It was monitored twice per day the entire season Commercial Asphalt was open in 2003. Councilmembcr Elvig explained the Committee wanted to look at the combination of when the smell is bad and what is going on at the plant that day. Staffwas going to look into that and pull out some records to see if they could determine more of what is causing the odor. He was unaware that other people are complaining about this; from that view perhaps it is a bigger problem and there should be more sophistication in the monitoring. He would challenge staff to come forward with a consultant or a more sophisticated monitoring system, with a time frame included. Councihnember Kurak noted one of the options suggested by staff was to require the business owner to hire an outside agency to monitor the plant odor using more sophisticated test equipment, and a time frame could be placed on that. She suggested a two month time frame for receiving feedback as to what is really happening with the odor. She commented one person smelling it is a sniff test. Councilmembcr Strommen inquired about Commercial Asphalt pulling their production schedule from last year for comparison with the City's findings. Councihnember Elvig explained it seemed the plant could peg the hot dates and determine what was going on. Councihnember Strommen noted this could be looked at without any new monitoring being done. Councihnember Kurak suggested a time frame of a few weeks to gather this information and determine if they can go to the next step of requiring Commercial Asphalt to proceed with sophisticated monitoring. Councihnember Cook noted Commercial Asphalt seemed to notice a correspondence in the odor and the way of making the asphalt. The representative said this year, rather than producing the asphalt four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening, it could be done for eight hours and kept hot the whole time, which should help with the odor. If the plant is willing to work on this he thinks the City should work with them. He does not know where they could say Commercial Asphalt is breaking the conditional use permit and also he does not know where they can say something is offensive to one person and not another; it is a judgment call. He questioned what type of equipment there is to smell an odor. Mayor Gam¢c directed staff to determine what type of monitoring equipment there is and report back to the Public Works committee. He noted the PCA had a very positive report about Commercial Asphalt. City Council/May 11, 2004 Page 10 of 36