Fillmore Hopes to Persuade Egg Ranchs to Curb Odors

In the ongoing saga of the smell that devoured Fillmore, city officials have decided to consult a University of California poultry specialist for advice on minimizing the odors from 4 million chickens at two egg ranches 10 miles south of the city.

Residents have complained that the smell, which permeates Fillmore from time to time each summer, has been particularly bad this year, and city officials have looked to the egg ranches for a solution.

“They finally admitted that chicken manure smells,” said Fillmore City Manager Roy Payne, referring to a meeting of egg ranchers and city officials last week.

Payne said wind and weather conditions, particularly offshore breezes that seep over the egg operations, also contribute to the problem.

As a result of the preliminary discussion, Donald Bell, a poultry specialist from UC Riverside, has been asked to visit the two ranches--Egg City and Eggs West--to review manure-handling practices.

Another meeting with county officials, egg ranch personnel, and Fillmore administrators is tentatively scheduled for early September to discuss Bell’s analysis and consider further action.

But what that action might be remains unclear.

County officials say the Air Pollution Control District has no jurisdiction over agricultural odors. Fillmore’s choices are thus limited to encouraging voluntary action on the part of the ranchers, or pursuing expensive legal solutions.

Eggs West is planning a changeover to a more modern method of manure treatment, according to City Manager Payne. Egg City owner Rick Carrott said his operation has been using the method for years and is considered a model in the egg ranch industry.

As a poultry specialist, UC’s Bell is no stranger to disputes between farmers and city dwellers. Sometimes the issue is flies, at other times odor, Bell said.

“As long as we have animals and people together, we’ll have problems,” he said.

He emphasized that he will not assume a policing role, but will examine practices at the two ranches to spot weaknesses that the egg operations could choose to correct voluntarily.

Bell said he sees the egg-ranch conflict as part of a trend that may eventually force animal-based agriculture out of California altogether.

“California gets 2,000 new people a day,” Bell said. “That’s the real problem. Animal-based farming can’t be in suburbia.”

As a result of an aerial reconnaissance flight taken by Fillmore officials in late July, Mayor Delores Day said she attended last Thursday’s meeting confident that the egg ranches are indeed the source of the odor.

In the course of the session, the city suggested several procedures, believing them to be inexpensive for the ranches to implement. According to Day, these included hauling manure away more often, spreading it more thinly and composting the material only when fully dry.

“We assured them we were seeking an amicable solution, not trying to put them out of business,” Day added.

Egg City’s Rick Carrott expressed discomfort nonetheless.

“We used to be important to the community,” he said. “Now the demographics are changing--they want to get rid of us.”

The larger of Moorpark’s two egg producers, Egg City, employs 480 residents of Fillmore, Moorpark, Santa Paula and Oxnard.

Carrott admitted that chicken manure stinks.

“My wife makes me take my shoes off before I come in the house,” he said.

But he expressed concern that his ranch will be pressured into taking measures it cannot afford.

“If we are the problem, we can try to do what they are suggesting, but it may not always be possible,” he said.

Carrott said he is still hopeful of one day achieving an odor-free operation, and of being a good neighbor.

“All these things are possible--but, then, I used to believe in the tooth fairy, too,” he said.

Suggestions that the odor might be caused by Fillmore’s sewer plant, a source of some terrible smells of its own during a renovation 10 years ago, were refuted by Wastewater Supt. Kelly M. Polk of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.

“There has not been any upset of the treatment plant to warrant an odor problem,” Polk said. He added that Fillmore’s facility, which is owned by the city and run by Regional Sanitation, “is very stable--one of the better ones.”