ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Just walking the streets with long-time Childs Park resident, Jabaar Edmonds, you can feel the passion he has for the place he has always called home.
“I am a life-long resident. I was born and raised here,” Edmonds said.
But he also says something has never smelled right in the Childs Park neighborhood, literally.
“That’s just what you had to deal with. I mean, the odor," he said. "The odor was something that people never really get used to, but the odor was something that was normal. It was an everyday occurrence. You couldn't tell what time, rhyme or reason and it just became such an issue that even the schools and local businesses started to complain.”
He says the odor gets so bad at the elementary school located right in the middle of the Childs Park recreational corridor, that administrators have to keep kids inside.
“It smells like burnt tires. It smells like gas. It smells like any number of things,” Edmonds said.
It’s why the community started making noise a few years back. They started to hold community meetings to address the odor and make sure those in charge knew something was wrong.
“And then the campaign began. We started knocking on doors. We started getting people to make reports to the health department, to the CDC,” Edmonds said.
10 Investigates obtained logs from over the past two years related to the odor in Childs Park. Records show that there have been more than 60 complaints in the time frame about the smell. The culprit, according to the logs, is a factory in the industrial corridor that’s located just feet from the playground, lake, and elementary school.
“We had community members put air quality sensors on their homes," Edmonds said. "So we've done everything in our power, in our control, and we're just going to keep working at it."
And now Pinellas County’s Air Quality Division is also paying attention. They have deployed air sampling devices called Sensor Pods or SPODs on a private lot that can determine whether there are volatile organic chemicals also called VOCs in the air at any given time.
VOCs are chemicals that get into the atmosphere based on processes that produce them. The county has four on loan from the EPA.
Edmonds says he hopes they finally get answers about the air quality in Childs Park. He believes that it’s not just a bad smell, but bad for a person’s health. He hopes the readings on the air sampling devices will finally prove that.
“There has been no accountability," Edmonds said. "That's what we're fighting for. We're fighting for accountability. We want some next steps that will have our community, how can I say who would have a better quality of life."