Joe Rider and his neighbors on Blevins Drive in Concord have been battling a stench so overpowering they said it’s driven them indoors.
Just half a mile down the road, Lewis Farm began accepting food waste for composting in February. Once the summer heat hit and temperatures climbed past 80°F, the odor emanating from piles of decomposing discards intensified.
Rider said the thick, rotten and impossible-to-ignore odor has forced residents near the farm to keep their windows closed, cancel cookouts and stay away from their own yards.
“You felt like your property was being invaded by something that you could not get out, even with windows closed,” Rider said at the Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting on Tuesday. “It was to an aggravating extent that nobody should have to deal with because somebody else is trying to do something, whether it’s make money, be environmentally friendly in some way.”
New Hampshire’s food waste ban went into effect on Feb. 1, requiring anyone producing at least one ton of food waste a week, including schools, hospitals and large businesses, to use a composting or processing facility within 20 miles instead of a landfill or incinerator.
James Meinecke, owner of Lewis Farm, saw an opportunity to generate revenue by using his state-issued solid waste permit to make compost on his farmland. To his neighbors, however, the 27 tons of food scraps Meinecke has been receiving twice a week from Massachusetts have become a nuisance.
Composting naturally carries a distinct odor. On Meinecke’s farm, the scent of decomposing food hangs heavy in the air. He knows his neighbors can smell it, but he insists it’s simply a part of real farm life.
“They don’t want to live next to a farm. They want to live next to a postcard,” Meinecke said. “They want to have all of the benefits of that beautiful open land that I pay taxes on, and I invested my life in to be a farmer who engages in agricultural operations. Compost smells.”
After receiving four separate complaints about odor on his farm, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services sent Meinecke a letter in late August asking him to address the issue.
The state agency’s guidance on reducing foul odors while composting was to add sawdust, cardboard, paper, oak leaves, corn stalks or hay to the compost piles and to turn the piles regularly.
Jodie McLaughlin, another resident in the area, said she isn’t against composting but the smell has made living there difficult.
“We had rainy periods; it didn’t change,” said McLaughlin. “The smell was persistent regardless of rain or no rain.”
For every 27 tons of food waste Meinecke receives, he earns $800, a source of income he said is vital to supporting his 118-acre farm, where he also raises pigs and chickens.
“It is the only thing I have on the farm that regularly produces income every week,” Meinecke said. “I can’t stop composting.”
Residents in the area have been looking for solutions to resolve the issue for months, approaching both state and city authorities multiple times since the farm began composting.
They have also maintained a detailed log of odor incidents since August. Their roughly 60 entries and counting range from days when the smell was faint to days when it was so strong that it made residents nauseous or prevented them from spending time outdoors.
Meinecke and his family have lived on the farm for eight years, facing several challenges along the way, including the city of Concord repeatedly denying them permits to transform the property into an agritourism destination, such as hosting farm-to-table dinners.
Complaints about his composting process have been just another source of frustration for Meinecke, who said he would prefer that neighbors contact him directly rather than raising issues at public forums.
“When you come here, come here with the understanding that this farm has been making smells for 200 years or more and has been here since before those houses,” said Meinecke. “I don’t want to bother the neighbors. It’s not intentional.”
