If you have fished pool 2 around the 494 bridge area, you know the smell! Looks like the rendering plant is going to try and fix the problem!
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South St. Paul / Company has plan to reduce odors
Sanimax will add scrubbers, space to rendering plant
By Nick Ferraro
[email protected]
Posted: 08/26/2010 12:01:00 AM CDT
A South St. Paul rendering plant believes it has the answers to help control its stink.
As a way to reduce odors, Sanimax plans to add 11,000 square feet to its processing plant at 545 Hardman Ave. and lengthen its five “scrubber stacks” — which suck in odor during processing and treat the air — and build two more.
The company’s proposed measures will coincide with efforts by the city to regulate odor from businesses through an ordinance that would require them to eliminate odor pollution or face a penalty.
Although the city’s stockyards closed in April 2008, city officials say a stench lingers in BridgePoint industrial park, which is home to Sanimax, a tanning company and a couple of small slaughterhouses.
Smells would be measured by “odor units,” or levels, that city staff would measure through a hand-held olfactory gadget.
Tim Kedrowski, plant manager at Sanimax, which processes meat byproducts, hides and used cooking oil into animal feed or biofuels, said their odor-eliminating efforts were planned well before talk of any city ordinance.
“Sanimax knows the business, and its desire is to do what is right,” he said. “We’ve been here for a long time, and we don’t have to make these changes. We are doing them to be a better part of the community.”
Troy Bech, the company’s environmental health and safety specialist, said that because their air stacks are not high enough, the air becomes hung up near their building.
Air samples have shown that 100 feet is the ideal height to disperse the air adequately, he said. The air stacks now range from 51 to 61 feet high.
Additional space that will be added to the east end of the building will help reduce the time that trucks loaded with beef and chicken remains are waiting outside and processed inside, Bech said.
“If there is anything that is going to smell bad, it would be raw material rotting,” he said.
The company’s $8 million project — approved last week by the city council — also includes remodeling its 5,000 square feet of office space, extensive landscaping and revised parking areas.
Sanimax is based in Montreal with U.S. headquarters in Green Bay, Wis.
Work is expected to begin this year and will be done in stages over the next six years, Bech said, with the first phase involving the air scrubber stacks.
Meanwhile, City Planner Peter Hellegers said the city’s ordinance will not be ready for council consideration until early next year.
In the next month, the city will buy a Nasal Ranger field device to measure odor. Several staff members will then be trained by St. Croix Sensory, a Lake Elmo business that makes the Nasal Ranger and specializes in rating stench.
“I know there will be at least two of us, and I was trying to talk to a few more so we would have a broader base of people,” Hellegers said. “But no one really wants to do odor training.”
Nick Ferraro can be reached at 651-228-2173.
Might have to look at those charcoal lined underwear. 
