Workers near a South Florida business that turns produce into fertilizer say it’s keeping away customers, and making them sick.
Broward County said it has gotten 70 complaints against Organic Dynamics, in Pompano Beach close to I-95 and Atlantic Boulevard.
Allison Lampert is counting the weeks until her first baby is born – and worrying about what she’s breathing in when she goes to work at the gun store near Organic Dynamics.
“It got progressively worse, to where I absolutely could not be here,” she said. “It reeked. It smelled like dead bodies.”
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Lampert stays away from the weapons range at the gun store, but claims she can't do anything about the stench coming into the store from the recycling plant located behind her job.
“The customers say things all the time and you can see them leave, especially the range. People just get up and walk out,” she said.
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Organic Dynamics says in its promotional materials that it “provides a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable solution” for corporate waste management.
But workers nearby said the plant makes them sick and is running off customers.
The owner of the building that housed a gentleman's club next door called it a big headache, saying the strip club shut down and there was a foul odor in the parking lot.
Meantime, Dave Burk said the aroma even overpowers the smell of new tires in his warehouse.
“From a scale of 1 to 10, it’s off the chart,” Burk said.
He said his customers ask if there’s a dead body nearby.
“They just say the same thing – something’s died around here. It’s terrible. I’ve seen them walk away, they’re holding their noses,” Burk said.
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Broward County’s pollution director, Jeff Halsey, said that Organic Dynamics had already been fined more than $10,000, and then recently agreed to pay more than $14,000 in fines for the smell coming out of the building.
Halsey said that Organic Dynamics is “under enforcement for failure to comply with environmental regulatory requirements, most notably the offsite objectionable odor prohibition.”
An Organic Dynamics representative said that many of the complaints against the company have been unsubstantiated.
Managing member Sam Kafin said in a statement that Organic Dynamics has been “not only good stewards to the environment but to our surrounding industrial neighbors.”
The odors aren’t harmful, he added.
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Still, those tired of the alleged stench went to a county hearing demanding action last month.
“I have actually seen a kid, I think he was about 12 or 13, who had come in with his parents – was outside puking,” Lampert said.
The county said that Organic Dynamics wants to install new equipment that it said will dramatically improve the air quality at the location. The county is giving the company until Feb. 8 to get that new equipment installed, and some relief for workers nearby.
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