WOODLAND, Calif. -- This town stinks. The mayor has been sniffing around for a solution. The local newspaper editor has also nosed about. An expert briefly brought in a scent-detecting device straight out of an old "Star Trek" episode.
But nobody has solved the mysterious odor problem.
Some nights, when the wind blows just so, various stenches waft across residential areas, causing folks to hold their noses and run for the phone.
So many complained that Woodland created a 24-hour odor hotline. One caller said the aroma smelled like rotting feet. Another said it was more like sweaty socks or "horrible tennis shoes." Still another likened it to "a wet dog rolling in manure."
"It's horrible," said resident Tim Bair. "It's like driving by a cattle feed lot, sniffing the ocean at low tide and standing on an open sewage hole, all rolled into one."
This Sacramento bedroom community of 52,000 residents, where farmers' fields meet newly built subdivisions, is like many places nationwide where urban growth has brought complications to areas once strictly devoted to agriculture.
Woodland is trying to collect enough clues to help a consultant -- a sort of smell detective -- create an odor map that would plot the most noxious locations and help pinpoint the source or sources of the smells.
Possible culprits, alone or combined, include fields of hay, rice and alfalfa, a tomato cannery, a wastewater treatment plant, a biomass center that turns wood waste and fruit pits into energy -- even the local animal shelter. Or maybe, a resident suggested, somebody is spreading too much chicken manure on the tomato plants.
So far, the town has learned this: Odor identification is a funny, inexact field. While they know that wind-borne odors can travel for many miles, they don't know if they're dealing with one smell from a single source or a variety of smells from different places -- a sort of cocktail of bad odors.
Officials quickly decided that, though colorful, the descriptions used by hotline callers needed refinement. So they devised their own smell vocabulary, urging callers in a recorded message to use words such as "musty," "pungent," "compost-like," "swampy" or "smelling like wet hay." To help with the odor map, callers are also asked to be specific -- noting the time, place and wind direction when the smell was detected.
Two dozen people have called the hotline since August. "We're hoping this doesn't turn into a mob hysteria," said Gary Wegener, director of public works. "Once you start talking about smells, the more people start sniffing around and saying, 'Well, gee, now that you mention it, that is an odor.' "
Woodland's most noxious smells are elusive and often short-lived.
The mayor drove around town and said he smelled something bad. That's when Jim Smith got involved. "Our mayor says it's something putrid and rather rancid," said Smith, editor of the local Daily Democrat newspaper. "So I went out with my nose to the air, but I couldn't find it. When I drive by the local cannery, it's always smelled pretty good to me. I can see the steam coming off the tower. It's always smelled like tomato sauce, and that's not bad."
Air quality specialist Dave Smith considers himself somewhat of a smell expert. But even he is baffled by some of the reports to the hotline.
"The thing with odors is that nobody agrees on them," said Smith, a supervisor at the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District. "It's all in the nose of the beholder. At the cannery, some people kind of enjoy a whiff of tomato soup, but others don't like it. These odors are worse. It's a rotten smell you wouldn't want in your home at night."
Mayor David M. Flory is tired of theories. He wants answers.
"I just can't understand why we can't identify this. We've got a laboratory and environmental engineers who should be able to tell us what is responsible for this," he said.
Flory said a bad smell a decade ago was pinpointed to a sugar beet factory that has since closed. At one City Council meeting back then, residents wore gas masks.
The mayor knows everyone is working hard for an answer but says that the repeated failure to identify a definitive source just isn't acceptable. "Staff memos are full of speculation," he said. "This just doesn't pass the smell test."
In August, the air quality board investigated the Pacific Coast Producers plant, which company officials call the world's largest canned tomato products facility. An inspector visited the fields where the firm spreads leftovers from tomato cleaning, including muddy water, tomato juice and salts. He detected some objectionable odors and cited the cannery for creating a public nuisance.
