All of us at Claystone Waste extend our sincere apologies to the residents of Ryley and Beaver County who have been affected by the compost odours coming from our facility over the past week. We recognize that has been a challenging situation for you to deal with, especially during the summer when you want to spend time outdoors.
The odours coming from our site have been significantly higher than usual. At first, we believed it was the result of weather conditions that were trapping odours in the lower atmosphere, similar to what it was doing with the smoke and moisture causing the fog and humidity we experienced last week.
While this certainly didn’t help the situation, after continued investigation through the weekend, we discovered the cause of the increased odours was due to a technical glitch that caused our aeration system to not operate properly. Proper aeration is important as it ensures the organics decompose in an aerobic state, which reduces the generation of smell. The smell that can be described as “rotten” allowed us to diagnose the problem: a lack of oxygen going into the primary piles.
The system controlling our aerators has been bypassed and we are operating them manually until technicians can repair the program. We are monitoring the piles, adding more biocover as needed to capture and filter any odours, which has already resulted in a reduction of odours, and continual improvement is expected.
We wish to assure you that this is an extraordinary event. Had the equipment been working properly, we would not have experienced such a prolonged odour event extending beyond the Claystone site.
We take resident concerns very seriously and it is important for us to know if you are experiencing something unusual so we can investigate. We cannot stress enough the importance of residents contacting us directly with any concerns as this helps us track and monitor the types and locations of concerns, which supports us in taking the appropriate measures to address the issue.
We are in the process of developing a new online form for people to submit any concern or complaint quickly and easily. This will assist us with gathering any information to help us better understand the issue and resolve it quickly. We will let you know when the form is live and available for your use.
We ask for your patience over the next few days as the aerators do their work and get the compost piles back into an aerobic state.
Once again, our apologies for the impact from this equipment malfunction. We have changed our internal processes to allow us to monitor these systems and identify any issues before they become a larger concern.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at info@claystonewaste.com.
