ESCANABA — A mysterious smell that popped up in multiple locations across Escanaba and made some feel ill has left officials searching for answers and hoping winter weather will at least provide a reprieve from the stench.

While officials aren’t sure the exact cause of the odor, Don Pyle, manager of the Delta Solid Waste Management Authority (DSWMA), says the smell is clearly sulfate. Sulfate odor is known to be produced by landfills, but the way the smell has manifested itself leaves him doubting the landfill is directly responsible for the odor.

“What’s most interesting about it is if you go down the road to where these folks are you can’t actually follow the trail back to the landfill, and it’s so spotty and phantom, which is not normal. Usually, if a landfill has an odor, you just follow the smell and it takes you to the landfill. These don’t seem to have that and nobody’s quite able to figure out why,” he said.

One possibility is the smell is coming from leachate, water that has traveled through solid waste and acquired particles from that waste. Those particles make the leachate take on a foul sulfur odor reminiscent of rotten eggs.

Leachate from the Delta County Landfill is transported to the Escanaba wastewater plant through the sewer system at a rate of more than 300,000 gallons in a typical month. Pyle and Escanaba Wastewater Superintendent Jeff Lampi have speculated the smell may be the result of the leachate traveling through the sewer, prompting the wastewater department to clean out the sewer line near the landfill twice.

“The first cleaning we cleaned about 80 percent of it out. The second time, we went through and cleaned it really, really clean. We feel that we’ve done pretty well and we’re hoping that has results,” said Lampi.

Businesses affected by the smell have reported better conditions following the cleaning. At Delta Wheel Truing Solutions, located on 19th Avenue North, the smell seems to have stopped following the wastewater department’s cleaning operations, but only time will tell whether the smell is gone for good.

“I don’t think the solution is done. I think it’s a temporary fix, but at least they’re being proactive,” said Steve Coble, plant manager at Delta Wheel Truing Solutions.

The smell at Delta Wheel Truing Solutions has thrown another curve into the mystery of the smell’s source, as employees traced the smell to expansion seams in the building’s floor and cracks in the parking lot. The idea the smell may be coming from the ground is further supported by the fact none of the buildings visited by wastewater employees where the smell was present had plumbing problems or dry traps, meaning leachate and any smell should be confined to the sewer.

No one has argued the smell couldn’t be traveling through the ground, but how the leachate — or anything else that could be responsible for the odor — would get into the soil to begin with has left officials scratching their heads. One idea put forward is that the leachate somehow leaked into the groundwater near the landfill and is migrating towards businesses.

“There’s no way. It’s not possible,” said Pyle.

According to Pyle, the landfill is up gradient of the water flow and groundwater in the area moves northwest to east-southeast, while many of the sites affected are east and just slightly north of the landfill. Even if the leachate were to have escaped the landfill cells and started moving eastward, Pyle says it would have been discovered in the multiple wells located on that side of the landfill.

“We have 73 wells across this facility that we check every three months, and we just completed one (check) in October again and none of them have issues. And I mean, we’ve been checking these every three months for over 35 years. If it was there you’d know it,” said Pyle.

While Pyle noted he and the landfill authority board want to be part of the solution rather than the problem and would step up if they were found to be the source of the smell, he couldn’t be entirely sure the smell was coming from the landfill at all.

“If it’s coming out of the ground, it’s because there’s something over there under the ground and it’s got nothing to do with us,” he said.

Lampi doesn’t believe the smell is solely a wastewater issue either, and believes adding a chemical to leachate at the landfill may be the best option to reduce or eliminate the smell. Alternatively, the landfill could consider trucking the leachate either to the wastewater plant or to the water treatment plant at K.I. Sawyer, which is set up to handle that type of wastewater, but may already be at capacity. The cost of chemicals is unknown, but Lampi predicts trucking costs could be extremely high.

“It’s not just the wastewater because these costs are going to be passed to the landfill and the landfill’s going to pass their cost on to every county resident. Everyone in the county’s going to have to pay for what’s happening right now, whether they like it or not,” said Lampi.

At the moment, whether due to the sewer cleanings or something else, complaints have stopped coming in and wastewater employees can only locate the odor on certain days. However, as temperatures drop, Lampi, Pyle, and even individuals like Coble expect the smell may disappear entirely. If that happens, the wastewater and the landfill could be in an even worse position. With no odor, there will be no way to track the source, and no way to take action on the smell before the spring thaw.

“The problem is what if we don’t smell anything until the weather warms up? That’s what I really think is going to happen. We’re going to be free and clear all winter and then the weather comes back, the humidity comes back and then people are going to start smelling it and they’re going to complain, ‘you didn’t do anything all winter.’ Well, we didn’t feel there was need to because you can’t fix something that’s not broke,” said Lampi

The cold weather is also why Lampi has decided to delay searching for an engineer to try to crack the case. While waiting until spring saves the wastewater department money, Lampi told the Daily Press the department will begin searching for an engineer over the winter if complaints start coming in during the next few weeks.

“I don’t think it’s going to go away. I’m not optimistic that what we did is going to solve the answer,” said Lampi.