DES MOINES, Iowa — City leaders in Des Moines are providing an update on their efforts to address those not-so-pleasant smells in the air.
At a city council work session Monday morning, Dalton Jacobus with the Neighborhood Inspections Division presented data collected from the ten odor monitors installed last fall.
The monitors were placed near four facilities that were identified as potential odor culprits: Darling Ingredients, Smithfield, Wiechmann Pig Company and Des Moines Sewage Treatment.
Odor complaints spiked in 2023 after the city launched an online portal for residents to submit their concerns online. They found the number of complaints was particularly high during the summer.
"We see that we have higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, generally in June, July, August. And those also seem to be when we have our highest complaints," Jacobus said.
Data shows that wind speed, direction and frequency also play a key role in the number of complaints.
"If we get a bunch of complaints, we'll check the reports and do the stuff in the system to find out what's going on," Jacobus told the council. "We'll create backward trajectories in the system to show where that odor plume was coming from."
Smithfield, one of three meat processing plants where odors are monitored, began taking steps of their own.
The company invested $2 million to install a device that reduces "volatile organic compounds" and up to 98 percent of odors in the air.
Darling Ingredients has made similar improvements, according to the company's Director of Environmental Affairs, Billy Holmes.
"Anytime we receive an odor complaint, our local team is going out... they're going to try and do this in real time, verify our equipment and the plant is running appropriately," Holmes said.
Jacobus wants residents to know that the foul odor is not a public health issue, and their their work to mitigate the concerns will continue.
The division will soon be installing 10 additional odor monitors throughout the city in order to gather additional data.