Fumes blanket Palmer neighborhood

PALMER — Smelly fumes coming off of a construction waste disposal pit blanketed a Palmer neighborhood near the Alaska State Fairgrounds Tuesday.

What’s causing the smell though, remains to be determined. Initial investigation indicates the smell is either steam being released from decaying building materials, or smoke from materials buried there that are on fire there, according to various sources contacted for the story.

Bruce Axtell, acting chief of the Palmer Fire Department, said that his department was monitoring the situation but the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation was going to be the one taking care of it.

Though he described it as a fire, DEC officials said that has not been officially determined yet. If it is a fire, Axtell said, it’s not the kind you can just put out.

“If you want to liken it to something it’s like one of those underground coal seams that’s on fire and you just can’t put it out,” Axtell said.

Reached early Tuesday afternoon, a DEC official said she hasn’t sent anyone out yet but planned to visit very soon.

“We would go out there and evaluate it and if we think that there are some issues we would work with them to come up with a mitigation plan,” Solid Waste Program Coordinator Lori Aldrich said.

She said the pit has in the past released gases from decaying waste, but she said she hadn’t heard anything about a fire burning there previously.

The current complaints, she said, are of an odor that smells distinctly of smoke but she couldn’t say for sure if the odor was from a fire.

“We don’t know that this is actually a fire. We would have to dig it up to determine if it’s actually a fire or badly degrading waste,” she said.

A statement the company that owns the site, Alaska Demolition, put out late Tuesday afternoon does not clear up the smoke/fumes/steam question. It read, in part:

"At about 7:00 a.m. this morning, Tuesday December 3rd, the operator for the site arrived and observed smoke and or steam emanating from the side of a filled area containing some inert demolition debris. Corrective action was taken by the employee and no further smoke or steam was observed by 9 a.m.

"Representatives of the company will meet with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation on Wednesday to determine the extent of any further monitoring or corrective action to be taken."

She said that fires aren’t terribly common in waste pits but do happen sometimes. The pit in question is inspected at least yearly and sometimes more often.

“The last couple years they’ve gotten very good inspection reports,” Aldrich said.

Comments about the smell trickled into the Mat-Su Valley News discussion group on Facebook Tuesday afternoon. Mat-Su Borough Assemblyman Matthew Beck, who represents the area, urged his constituents in that group to call the city of Palmer with complaints.

“We have been smelling since last night,” Beck said.

Group member Nancy Driscoll Stroup described the odor as “a horrible burning smell in the air.”

Axtell said that the weather could be playing a role, keeping the fumes down low where neighbors can smell them.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.