Local air quality regulators are monitoring an animal waste plant responsible for stinking up an East Vancouver neighbourhood.
“They smell bad, but emissions are not considered to be harmful at all. The workers work in this stuff.”
Ray Robb, Metro Vancouver’s manager of environmental regulation and enforcement, says the impact from a breakdown causing a build-up of unprocessed waste at west coast reduction is minimal, but “Some people have a physiological response. One of the bigger issues that we need to deal with is getting the emissions down to a level that people can enjoy their property and not constantly feel anxious.”
Metro Vancouver is currently developing a bylaw identifying low, moderate and high risk offenders.
“What we’re hoping to do is to move that over to a polluter pay model where it’s not the taxpayer paying on their property tax for our staff to respond to odours, it’s the companies that emit the odours.”
People living near the west coast reduction plant, at the bottom of Commercial drive, have been complaining for several days.
A breakdown last week caused a build-up of unprocessed animal waste.
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