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QuickTake:
The regional air protection agency is investigating reports from residents across the metro area of an unpleasant fecal-chemical smell last week and weekend.
The Lane Regional Air Protection Agency launched an investigation Monday, Aug. 4, into recent reports of a foul odor across Eugene and Springfield.
Questions about the smell began to circulate in online forums for the Eugene-Springfield area last week and continued over the weekend, with some users encouraging residents to file complaints to LRAPA, which monitors and regulates air quality in Lane County. In online posts, residents have described the intense odor as an “awful manure smell,” a mixture of “poop and cheese” and “vomit” with chemical notes.
Matt Sorensen, LRAPA’s public affairs and project manager, told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the agency launched an investigation into the smell Monday morning after receiving complaints.
The agency official investigating the odor has already checked in with some industrial facilities in Lane County that are permitted by the agency to see if they have faced any production problems or other issues that would have caused the smell, Sorensen said. He declined to identify those facilities, because the agency has not yet heard back from them.
He said the agency is also reaching out to local organic composting groups because biosolids, or fertilizers like compost, from a farm or “organic residential activities” could have caused the odor.
“Any time you’re doing odor investigations, there’s a lot of factors involved: Where did it occur? What was the wind doing at the time? What was the time of day?” Sorensen said. “There’s a lot of possible sources, and so we really will need to take our time to look into this.”
Many reports of the smell in online forums like Reddit and Nextdoor came from residents in Springfield, Cal Young, Coburg and Santa Clara. Others came from areas further west, like West Eugene and Bethel-Danebo.
In LRAPA’s investigation, the investigator will use wind roses, which characterize the speed and direction of winds at a location, to see if there is any pattern or consistency to the odor complaints, Sorensen added.
One commenter from northeast Eugene wrote on Nextdoor on Saturday that the smell was so strong that their husband checked his shoes to see if he had stepped in dog poop.
Another on Reddit said on Friday that the odor gave them a headache and caused dizziness.
“The crazy thing is I’ve lived here for 25 years and smelled all our genres of smells. Paper mill, smoke, granary, etc etc,” a Reddit user who lives in the south Willamette area wrote on Thursday. “This smell was unprecedented enough to warrant discussion.”
Others urged residents to report the smell to LRAPA to identify its source.
“The more people that complain [to LRAPA], the more likely they are to investigate the source of this stench,” a commenter from east Springfield wrote on Sunday in a Nextdoor thread about the odor. “We should do it every day that this God awful smell persists.”
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