City to monitor Saint-Michel compost stench
As summarized here, Saint-Michel residents were happy when the old Miron Quarry stopped being a landfill, and were less than happy when it was later decided part of it would be used for city composting. The city has tempered this by promising electronic sniffing devices that should sound an alarm if things become too rank again in the area.
walkerp 11:34 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
If properly managed (and that’s a big if when you’re working with the mafia), large-scale compost sites don’t smell at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not like garbage which is just sitting there festering. The nitrogen (which is what smells) that is released from the organic matter should be properly mixed with carbon-based materials. When bound together, there is no odour.
Faiz Imam 11:41 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
Yeah. There is a 50 ton composter at Loyola run by Sustainable concordia, and almost no one knows it exists.
Kate 11:48 on 2012/08/08 Permalink
That’s good news. I suspect these electronic sniffers are going in more to appease residents than because the authorities expect a big stink. (If I were feeling cynical, I’d suggest the city could put in technical-looking boxes with nothing inside them…)
John B 15:39 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
So, what are they going to do if the sniffers detect a stench? It’s not like they’ll be able to say “hold on to your compost for a couple of weeks, city, while we work this out.”
walkerp 06:48 on 2012/08/10 Permalink
There was more on this story on the news yesterday and I guess it’s not just about the smell, but also about all the trucks coming and going, which is a reasonable complaint. Also, from what it sounds like (and I should really be better informed here), this site is just for the seasonal pickup of yard waste in the spring and fall and not one of the sites where the regular household compost pick-up will happen (if it ever does).
John B, I guess if the smell does reach a certain “level” on the smell-o-meter, they can just truck in a bunch of carbon matter (straw, sawdust, dried leaves) and dump it on the site. That’s what you do with a home compost or composting toilet.
John B 07:48 on 2012/08/10 Permalink
@walkerp Wouldn’t that require having an emergency stash of carbon matter on hand, (yes, I’m being a pain in the a** ;). Of course, that’s totally Montreal Government-style, wait until the stink gets too much to handle, then sort of try to do something about it, instead of properly managing the situation so it doesn’t stink, (literally, or metaphorically), in the first place.
Kate 11:44 on 2012/08/10 Permalink
walkerp, you’ve amended my post excellently. Yes, it’s also about the endless trucks, which that area dealt with for years when the quarry was a dump. I checked to see whether the composting area is currently being used for the Rosemont pilot project as well as the yard waste stuff, but this item from April says in passing that the borough is sending the compost off-island until the city builds its own facilities.
Not sure what you mean by “nitrogen (which is what smells)” because N has no smell. I’m guessing it’s shorthand for how the breakdown of nitrogen-rich materials might be a bit stinky?
John B, I can only hope that there’s knowledge to be had about how to compost properly on a grand scale, because although the city’s been doing its own yard waste, Christmas tree and municipal gardening scraps composting for a long time, doing curbside composting for the whole city’s got to be a much more major deal.
John B 07:40 on 2012/08/11 Permalink
There should be knowledge on how to compost properly on a large scale. Toronto’s been doing it for years. I believe both PEI and Nova Scotia have province-wide composting programs, (although it I’m not sure if PEI counts as “large-scale”).