ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – Six St. Johns County residents have filed a lawsuit on behalf of their neighborhood against a “composting and sewage sludge processing plant” they say is responsible for “noxious and foul odors caused by the storage, spreading, and processing of human feces.”
According to the lawsuit filed June 17, Indianhead Biomass LLC is releasing “substantial and unreasonable noxious odors feces that creates a significant and unreasonable interference for many residents.”
The lawsuit stated that the smell affects the Morgan’s Cove neighborhood and surrounding areas within a 2-mile radius.
“Indianhead’s operation and maintenance of the Plant wrongfully and tortiously released odors that have invaded and continue to invade Plaintiffs’ property causing significant and unreasonable damages,” the lawsuit states.
That odor was recently the subject of an article written by Erin Brockovich, a well-known environmental activist, and Suzanne Boothby posted on the Brockovich Report.
Some of the other neighborhoods affected by the smell include Carter Road and St. Augustine Lakes.
“I’m not really shocked, because they’ve been, there’s been talks about it for a while now, but I’m shocked that it actually happened,” said Morgan Cove resident Jacob Adair.
In May, News4JAX spoke with Kurt and Elieen Reyburn, who live in Morgans Cove subdivision but are not plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They said they bought their home six months ago.
The home is located in St. Augustine, but falls outside of city limits.
“We moved down here thinking this would be the last place we moved to,” Kurt said.
However, there’s one problem with their new home.
“Smells like human poop,” Eileen Reyburn said.
“Smells like some kind of waste material and it’s more prevalent when you get a south-easterly breeze,” Kurt Reyburn said.
The Reyburns said they didn’t know the odor existed until after they bought their home — had they known, they wouldn’t have bought it.
In addition to the smell being the topic of a post on the Brockovich Report, it’s also the topic of the Facebook group Stop the Stink - Indianhead Biomass.
Indianhead Biomass Services, a business that accepts yard debris and makes compost, has been in St. Augustine for over a decade. And many subdivisions are not far from it.
The compost is made from Biosolids, which are organic matter recycled from sewage, and parts of trees.
According to a log from the Florida Department of Environmental Protections, from January 2023 to February of this year, the company received hundreds of complaints for odor. The lawsuit claims there were more than 1,200.
Also on the FDEP site is a record that shows the company had a Consent Order, where they had to pay $7,000. One of the reasons included things like storing biosolids outside of permitted areas.
News4JAX spoke with Heather Lane Neville, who works in planning and policy for the company.
She said she was surpirsed by the lawsuit and said Indianhead doesn’t have human feces on their property, and they are working on the smell.
“So we’re looking at replanting trees, which are a great way to manage any kind of movement of air across anything,” Lane Neville said. “You see them on interstates, to manage noise, dust, anything like that. And those we’re looking at, those are all called attenuation projects.”
“We receive biosolids,” she continued. “And biosolid is what’s left over from the wastewater treatment plant. It is no longer fecal matter. It’s actually called a bio-solids, and it’s been treated at a county facility. We don’t, we don’t collect it ourselves. There’s no treatment process going on for the bio solids on our facility. And so we process the biosolids with yard debris, and it creates the compost that we make.”
She added that they are exploring ways to rearrange their material in a way that reduces their pile heights. That will let them put more wood chips and bio filters to cover it completely. It wasn’t clear if any changes had been made since May.
And the Reyburns said they hope something gets solved soon, because they’re worried about what the plant and its smell could be doing to their health.
“Breathing is difficult when it’s blowing,” Eileen said.
So they said they stay inside most of the time.
Indianhead said people can always contact them if they have an issue with the odor, so they can work to solve the problem.
