Residents raise a stink about smell in Grafton

It’s the scent of summer in Grafton, Massachusetts.

“It smells like fish,” resident Alison Wilson said on Wednesday. “It smells like decaying bodies.”

Nearby, Pamela Renzoni described it similarly.

“It’s like rotten seafood you would smell in a dumpster.”

According to residents, the putrid odor permeating town has been originating from a sustainable waste management service, and many believe it’s getting worse.

“Yesterday my neighbor went out and actually looked in her bushes to see if there was a dead animal,” explained Wilson.

Some, like Wilson, have also raised health concerns and filed complaints with the company responsible for the odor, FeedBack Earth.

In return, they claim “neighborhood sniffers” were dispatched. 

“His name is sniffer Paul,” explained Renzoni. “He comes here and he sniffs and he never seems to admit that he smells something. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

NBC10 Boston went to FeedBack Earth, Inc. on Creeper Hill Road to ask about the high volume of concerns.

“The odors do not smell great, but they are 100% safe,” clarified Alison Greenlee, CEO and owner.

Greenlee explained the company’s mission is to take in food waste, dry and process it, and then turn it into animal feed.

“We do not seek out spoiled food, but inevitably spoiled food does come to us,” she said.

When asked about the odor permeating throughout town, Greenlee acknowledged the stench.

“We are actively no longer doing anything in open tops or dump trailers. Everything is going to go offsite in airtight, closed boxes to obviously prevent that disturbance in the future,” she said.  “We’ve noticed that although our deodorizing system for our stacks is actually quite, quite good, it cannot handle the baseline odor capacity with some of that rancid product now in it. So we are actively installing new systems and new capacity inside the deodorizing system, so we can, simply stated, spray more product, more deodorizing agent into the stream to effectively eliminate all odors that are exposed to the community.”

Greenlee also offered an apology.

“We very much do care. This is our focus, we will fix this, and I’m really sorry that it’s taken a few weeks for us to make that possible,” she said.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection released the following statement to NBC10 Boston on Wednesday:

“MassDEP is aware of the concerns raised by residents regarding Feedback Earth and is actively working to ensure that air quality in the surrounding communities is not further impacted. “We are in conversations with the Attorney General's Office on this situation and are committed to protecting the public health and the environment while addressing this matter.” – MassDEP Spokesman Ed Coletta

FeedBack Earth notified residents they will be hosting a community town hall on Friday from 3 p.m.-5 p.m. at Grafton Community Barn to address additional concerns.