St. Johns County resident Joanne McClellan, one of the residents concerned about the Indianhead biosolids operation, told the Wall Street Journal: “This county has grown so fast, and they’ve not managed it well,” said McClellan, who has lived with her husband, Chuck, on 7 acres, since 1979. Today, they have two horses, three roosters and a rat terrier. “Suddenly we can’t breathe easy anymore.” From The Wall Street Journal:
America’s Development Boom Meets a Smelly Reality
Suburban Florida residents say increasing sewage sludge has them canceling backyard barbecues. ‘Stop the Stink St. Augustine’ rallies neighbors.
Aug. 2, 2025 at 10:00 am ET
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla.—Something foul is in the air just west of this historic city’s Spanish fort and pristine beaches.
“This odor is like a beast,” said Sonya Fry, who sometimes pulls her shirt up over her face when she walks her dog. “It will blast you—and your nose just starts dripping.”
More than 500 years after Ponce de Leon tried to settle “La Florida,” subdivisions are multiplying—inevitably producing more human waste, and increasing pressure to find companies to process it. Outside St. Augustine, Indianhead Biomass mixes treated sewage sludge with yard debris to create compost piles up to 30-feet high. Its neighbors are now raising a stink about the stench.
In more than 1,200 complaints filed with the state, residents describe canceling backyard birthday parties, barbecues and Easter egg hunts. “I was immediately hit with a horrible poop smell,” one wrote, of a 7 a.m. stroll. “Stinks like s—. Every goddamn night,” fumed another.
Locals post drone and dashcam videos of the company’s operations. Fry, 58, an elementary school paraprofessional, created the website “Stop the Stink St. Augustine” to rally neighbors. She admits the county, among the fastest-growing in the nation, is in a fix: “They don’t know where to send the poop.”
The fight mirrors others around the country over treated human waste, known as biosolids. The U.S. generates at least 4 million dry metric tons of it annually, according to data from the 41 states tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency. About 60% of that is treated to remove pathogens and applied to farms and gardens, although more states are tightening regulations on the use given concerns about PFAS contamination in particular. The rest is landfilled or incinerated.
But the creep of development is also prompting fights in communities where people say their lives and property values are suffering from proximity to sewage sludge.
‘Joe Dirt’
Fry and five neighbors sued Indianhead in June, alleging nuisance and negligence. They also seek to block a permit needed to process biosolids.
Chris Nidel, an attorney for the residents, said the lawsuit focuses on the smell.
Indianhead’s day-to-day operations are run by Joe Williams, who has made a career in compost. He said he started calling himself “Joe Dirt” after watching the David Spade movie of the same name. The company denied any wrongdoing through an attorney.
Heather Lane, a consultant for Indianhead, said biosolids get a bad rap. Using them to make compost saves landfill space, sequesters carbon and replaces synthetic fertilizer. “Who wants to sit around and talk about biosolids all day?” Lane asked. “I do. The nitrogen content is pretty amazing.”
Indianhead, nestled in dense woods, started processing biosolids in 2018. In 2022, building began in Morgan’s Cove, a new residential development. Sonya Fry and her two daughters each bought a house that year for between $365,000 and $450,000. They say they were told the pungent odors came from landscaping and would fade once construction stopped.
Teachers, police officers and others now live in the subdivision, where a foul smell often still wafts overhead. Wind speed and direction, humidity and temperature affect nuisance odors from biosolids, the EPA says.
Resident odor complaints
St. Augustine
95
Indianhead Biomass
Morgan’s Cove
207
Area of detail
FL
1 mile
On a recent 90-degree day, Fry, her daughter Heather Babcock and neighbors stood beneath towering power lines, watching trucks a quarter-mile away churning up dust at Indianhead.
“There it is—I just got a whiff!” said Mike Adams, 64, a retired communications technician who now keeps tabs on Indianhead. He wouldn’t have bought his house, he said, had he known biosolids were just beyond the trees.
Babcock, 32, a freelance graphic designer, said if she had the money she would move “in a heartbeat, just to be done with all this.”
A few miles away, Joanne McClellan, 71, a retired railroad employee, said she gets hit when the wind blows the other way.
“This county has grown so fast, and they’ve not managed it well,” said McClellan, who has lived with her husband, Chuck, on 7 acres, since 1979. Today, they have two horses, three roosters and a rat terrier. “Suddenly we can’t breathe easy anymore.”
‘Compost Class’
St. Johns County spends $106 a ton to ship biosolids to Indianhead, said Neal Shinkre, the county’s utility director. The closest alternative, a landfill 160 miles away in Valdosta, Ga., would cost nearly twice as much.
Population growth is expected to boost the county’s annual biosolids shipments to more than 20,000 tons in 2035, from 12,000 today.
Shinkre described the economics while strolling a catwalk at a local wastewater plant, which will be expanded to handle more than double its current 3 million gallons a day. Tanks of brown liquid bubbled, and the air initially delivered a knockout blow. But finished biosolids smelled earthy.
He steers clear of the Indianhead furor, but said, “It is the most cost-beneficial way to process biosolids at this time.”
At Indianhead, heavy equipment shreds trees and yard waste, and the chips are blended with biosolids and cured for at least 60 days at temperatures that kill pathogens.
Williams reached into a warm mountain of compost on a recent day and held a double handful to his nose. It smelled like compost from Lowe’s.
“That’s not stinky,” he said. “I ate some on the news once.”
That evening, Lane led a “Compost Class” in a community center where the gym floor smelled freshly polished. Williams sat on one side; Sonya Fry and neighbors on the other.
Williams, who has acknowledged Indianhead’s neighbors don’t like him, noted he was proud of the company and its compost, saying, “I actually helped build your neighborhood.”
Lane said the company meets state and local requirements but that she is still investigating “long-term solutions.” Enclosed facilities that capture odors can run tens of millions of dollars.
The largely technical presentation frustrated some. “I didn’t learn anything new,” concluded Joanne McClellan.
As the cars pulled away, a soft breeze carried the untroubled scent of palm trees and the sea.
Write to Kris Maher at Kris.Maher@wsj.com
1 comment:
The hogs tear up things, leave a huge pile of waste, rinse and repeat. Anything for money. Actually producing something sustainable isn't their forte.
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