Business leaders line up against odor

Impatience is growing in communities awaiting relief from an odor-plagued industrial-scale composting plant near the Port of Wilmington, with talks turning Monday to protests if regulators fail to shut the site and clear the air.

The warnings – and an expression of concern from a prominent Wilmington developer – surfaced as the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control continues to weigh a key permit renewal needed to keep Peninsula Compost's Wilmington Organics Recycling Center open along Christiana Avenue near Terminal Avenue.

"I've heard talk of taking buses down to Dover, and there are complaints coming from the businesses in the Walnut Street area, and some of the banks," said Rep. James Johnson, D-New Castle. Johnson has pressed for years for action on odors that have rolled out the plant and into neighborhoods, often miles away.

The company's original "beneficial use" recycling permit expired last month, but regulators extended Peninsula's authority to operate its 160,000-ton-per-year facility pending a decision by DNREC Secretary David Small.

"It hurts economic growth throughout the city," said Robert E. Buccini, a principal member of Buccini/Pollin Group, a regional developer and leading figure in south Wilmington's multifaceted revival effort.

"Obviously, in order to maintain the momentum that we have on the riverfront, any foul smell is a detriment," Buccini said.

Buccini/Pollin's projects include the recently opened, $40 million Westin Wilmington Hotel, a joint venture with Westport Capital.

The state permit extension followed a Peninsula decision to voluntarily halt new shipments of castoff food wastes and other raw materials into its site, which had been bulging at times with covered and uncovered piles in various stages of composting.

More than 200 people attended a public hearing on the permit, with the overwhelming majority in opposition. Regulators have fielded hundreds of complaints about the site, which had hoped to use specialized fabrics, tight raw material controls and careful ventilation to carry out rapid, covered composting without odor headaches.

Offensive smells, originally said by project supporters to be confined to the largely disadvantaged communities nearby, have regularly been reported as far north as Brandywine Hundred and miles in other directions.

"I know the secretary would like to make a decision soon," said Nancy Marker, administrator of Delaware's Division of Waste and Hazardous Substances.

Although Peninsula volunteered to discontinue deliveries of new raw materials, "it's not something that we have required them to stop," Marker added.

Company officials could not be reached Monday.

Ed Osborne, a Wilmington landowner whose fight against a city plan to condemn his property for redevelopment efforts led to passage of restrictions on eminent domain use, said the sometimes cloying, garbagey-sweet smells from the plant amounted to a wrongful intrusion on surrounding neighborhoods.

"It's a terrible smell. On rainy days it seems to be the worst for some reason – the heavy gloom days," Osborne said, adding the he also has heard reports of organized protests and unhappiness among city business officials.

"We have other rights, too, and none are more important than the right to clean air and a safe city for families and kids, and that's not what's happening in the City of Wilmington," Osborne said.

Herman M. Holloway Jr., who directs King Center Delaware, a social service and advocacy agency in Southbridge and New Castle, said that he had been approached by the owners in recent weeks about talks on the problem and possible solution. But he said he saw little prospect for neighborhood support.

"People are adamant that they want them closed," Holloway said. "I told them I had to stand with my community."

Michael Purzycki, who directs the Riverfront Development Corporation, said that "every once in a while you get a scent of something" in the Riverfront area, where the state, city and private developers have plowed hundreds of millions into redevelopment and upscale businesses and housing.

"I don't know that it's a big deal down here. I've not had any complaints from any of our operators or business owners," Purzycki said, adding that the smell is "certainly not insufferable."

Port of Wilmington officials have in the past singled out the stench as a possible detriment to business development, with port operations shut down at one point in 2012 by dense smoke when piles of compost caught fire.

"I guess the technology hasn't panned out the way they'd like" for the composting operation, Buccini said.

"It's unfortunate, due to the investment and the job creation, that the technology is not working as everyone hoped," Buccini said.

"In terms of the smell that the facility generates, obviously it's a negative for Southbridge and throughout the Riverfront."

Contact Jeff Montgomery at 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.