Can A Florida Community Stop The Stink?

The Time For Telling People "I Don't Smell A Thing," Is Over. It's Time to Listen!

Photo by Maddie DiFilippo on Unsplash

When a neighborhood has a foul aroma, it usually comes down to one bad actor. Someone (usually a for-profit company) nearby is not managing their waste properly.

Waste management is one of the biggest challenges facing communities today. No one wants to live near an offensive smell, whether it’s a wastewater treatment plant, a containerboard plant, or a landfill. It’s not only gross but can also signal air or water pollution concerns.

My inbox has been on fire lately with community members near St. Augustine, Florida, located less than an hour south of Jacksonville.

In March Debra wrote, “…On almost a daily basis our community smells like human feces. We have been contacting the Florida FDEP so they will not renew the company's permit. However, currently our community is still being impacted.”

Another email said, “multiple communities are now complaining,” and another one wrote, “we can’t enjoy our yard or open the windows because of the smell.”

“The smell is horrible,” Donna wrote to me. “A lot of us are sick all the time. When I wipe my tables on my patio, they have a black film. Can the waste be in our water or backyards? Can we be getting poisoned? Please help us.”

Dante wrote, “Please help return our lives to normal.”

“Many of us have been putting in complaints with the city but they fall on deaf ears,” another community member wrote.

These kind of emails are heartbreaking and frustrating. Who are people supposed to call when their neighborhood suddenly stinks?

In this case, the neighbors have banded together to create a website, where they have presented how they are being impacted and detailed violations by the suspected bad actor—Indian Biomass Services.

It’s appropriately named Stop the Stink.

The affected areas, according to the site, include: Morgans Cove, Carter Road, St. Augustine Lakes, Deerwood Acres, Adams Acres, Green Acres, Prairie Lakes, Entrada, Osceola Heights, Holmes Blvd, Old Town Villages, along with other new residential developments in the vicinity.

The smell has reached as far as Osceola Elementary School and Murray Middle School. With rapid development in the vicinity, the community is concerned for the health and well-being of both the current and the future residents.

One thing I learned on their website that I find disturbing is that originally, the FDEP cited Indianhead in violation due to the odor problems. However, they have since begun to say to residents things like, “We don't monitor odors,” “It's normal for a facility to have a little odor,” and “Odor is subjective.”

Excuse me! That response is not okay. You can’t deny people’s senses.

The County is also playing hot potato, refusing to get involved saying there was a law change in 2023 that removed the ability to monitor or enforce any rules regarding biosolid operations directly.

What’s even more wild is that Indianhead Biomass Services was praised in a 2019 article for The St. Augustine Record for “turning waste into profit.”

“Thirty years ago, thousands of American cities dumped their raw sewage directly into the nation's rivers, lakes, and bays,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s old FAQ’s about biosolids. “Through regulation of this dumping, local governments (are) now required to treat wastewater and to make the decision whether to recycle biosolids as fertilizer, incinerate it, or bury it in a landfill.”

At the time, Joe Williams, operational manager of the company, told the local paper that he “takes the stuff from raw biosolids and treats them so they can be sold as soil amendment,” and he sells the product for about $10 a ton.

The article also states that the operation is regulated by federal and state agencies, so it’s especially concerning to me that people in the community are reaching out to these agencies and getting brushed aside.

In 2023, the mayor of St. Augustine posted on Facebook about her tour of the plant:

Recently was given a tour of Indianhead Biomass Services by Joe Williams, operations manager, where the city’s wastewater biosolids are safely treated to become a useful soil amendment instead of going to the landfill.

Hi Nancy Sikes-Kline! Are you listening to your constituents? They need your help.

All this press reminds me of when mayors or governors drink the water of a contaminated town on TV and say, “it tastes fine to me.”

It’s such a punch in the face to people who are already suffering. You can’t leave people in the dark and tell them what they smell isn’t real.

Sonya wrote to me, “Since Indianhead Biomass Services began processing biohazard waste in 2018, the neighboring communities have had their health and quality of life negatively impacted. We are trying to bring awareness to our situation.”

Here’s some of what I learned from the FAQs at Stop the Stink:

• The FDEP confirmed that Indianhead Biomass was the source of the odor in 2023. They investigated nearby potential sources but ultimately determined that Indianhead Biomass is the sole source of the fecal odor.

• In March 2023, Indianhead and the FDEP created the Odor Management Plan to address the odor problems that nearby residents were experiencing. In it, Indianhead Biomass vows: "If odors create a problem for you or your neighbors from Indianhead Biomass, we commit to you to resolve the odor problem quickly and effectively [...] We do not want to cause odor problems for you or any of our neighbors and commit to you to stay a good neighbor.”

• Despite this vow, the FDEP has documented that Indianhead has made no changes to address the odor concerns. The FDEP has not enforced the Odor Management Plan.

• Up until 2023, most people did not know that Indianhead processed biosolids. The residents who have lived here for decades were not sure where the odor was coming from nor where to officially report it. When Indianhead Biomass applied to do biosolids, one of the questions from the PZA was if Indianhead had reached out to discuss with the Morgans Cove community as well as notify all residents within 300 ft of the facility. Due to where Indianhead decided to put their biosolids operations, it was outside of the 300ft range in which required them to contact the existing residents, and no one yet lived in Morgans Cove. The surrounding residents were left in the dark about what was to come.

The Stop the Stink website maintains a detailed timeline for violations occurring at the Indianhead facility.

A local news channel has reported new violations: “A recent letter from St. Johns County, dated April 11, 2025, outlines multiple new violations by the facility, including unauthorized waste handling, fire hazards, excessive operating hours, and waste piles that exceed permitted height limits. Additional concerns include unapproved expansion, use of prohibited materials, and illegal weekend operations—all cited as ongoing threats to public health and safety.”

Background on Biosolids

I want to offer a bit of context because biosolids (also known as sewage sludge) are nothing new. For decades, this sludge has made its way to farmlands across the country as a “fertilizer” and opposition has been mounting amid growing environmental concerns about potential pollution of groundwater from toxic chemicals in the wastewater.

That concern is centered on PFAS found in extremely high levels in the sludge.

A Texas county declared a state of disaster earlier this year because of reported deaths of fish and cattle, as well as the contamination of groundwater, in areas where sewage sludge was being used as fertilizer.

Maine became the first state to ban the use of biosolids as a land fertilizer and Oklahoma is working on a similar ban.

Two studies back up the idea that biosolids can be harmful to human health. A U.S. EPA study released this year suggests human health risks exceed the agency’s thresholds, by “several orders of magnitude,” for scenarios where farmers applied the sludge to their land. Another study by the American Chemical Society found that PFAs can leak from biosolids into groundwater after a single application.

One recent study sums up what we need to move forward when it comes to biosolids including: infrastructure support for advancements in wastewater treatment; expanded manufacture and use of sustainable products; increased public communication of the risks associated with overuse of pharmaceuticals and plastics; and development and implementation of regulations that are protective of health and the environment.

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This time of year, people should be thinking about grilling season and inviting friends over for pool parties, not how to deal with the uncontrollable stink in their backyard.

We live in a hyper-­toxic time. American children are growing up exposed to more chemicals than any other generation in history and it shows. Rates of chronic disease for children are surging.

More than half of U.S. adults (or about 129 million people) are living with one or more chronic health conditions. We assume watchdogs are in place and that regulatory agencies and government standards are keeping us safe. But our health records show a different story.

“Areas affected by a high prevalence of multiple chronic diseases face a variety of socioeconomic and environmental barriers to achieving good health.” according to a recent CDC report. “Many risk factors for chronic disease are likely beyond the individual’s control and require large-scale policy change.”

When community members reach out to their elected officials and their regulatory agencies, those tasked with helping them need to listen and work with them to create change. It’s not just about aesthetics; it’s about public health and safety.

Let’s make some noise for the residents near this biosolids processing service and see if we can help them get rid of the stink and the putrid, chemical odor of sludge. From my perspective, they are taking the right action and those in charge: the FDEP, the County, the mayor, and other elected officials, the business owner, need to step up and clean up that stench.

Learn more at https://www.stopthestinkstaugustine.com.