ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Reports of odors in the St. Petersburg neighborhood of Childs Park have been documented for years. Some residents complained of headaches and said the smell was so strong they stayed inside.
"We have documents going back to the mid-'90s, at least," Sharon Wright, the head of St. Pete's Office of Sustainability and Resilience explained.
The residential areas of Childs Park are situated adjacent to industrial facilities.
"There was mention of incompatible land uses or at least needed a little more buffer. We know the industrial land uses are there because there was a railroad there in the past," Wright said.
On Thursday, St. Petersburg's office of sustainability and resilience presented a report to city councilors regarding neighborhood resilience collectives. In that report was an environmental impact study conducted at Childs Park.
In the report, results collected from the city's "Smell Something Say Something" campaign were shared. From April to July, in Childs Park, 25 reports were made of fuel or oil odors. Ten reports were made for gas odors.
The city has been compiling data and checking publicly available reports to get information on what could be causing an odor to waft through – but say now is the time to bring in the experts.
Wright said it's been hard to compile and interpret data that is made publicly available, and it's not enough for the city to understand what is causing the concerning odor. Some problems were found, and resolved, but didn't make the odor go away.
"There are several businesses with air operations permits, we looked into that," Wright said. "The violations we found usually came back into compliance."
Her office was able to secure funding for the installation of air sensors throughout Childs Park. But they need more data and tests to figure this issue out.
"What's in that report for the environmental assessment piece is the very beginnings of collecting some environmental data around air quality permits, other industrial permits, we still need to look at some stormwater things. We still need to look at a little bit deeper dive on some of the planning, but we did look a little bit at the history."
The industrial areas bordering Childs Park aren't monitored regularly for air quality.
Wright said she knows this isn't happening as fast as residents want. It will take time to get more tests done and to allocate funds to cover the costs.
"I think we understand more of what we need to do," Wright said. "We want to first make sure that the physical harm to that is not there. That they're in compliance is. We know that we need to continue to work with the residents and the businesses who have been engaging with us to see what we can do to mitigate those odors now or sooner while we're figuring out the data."
St. Pete city leaders say these investigations only began when formal complaints were made from the people living here.
The Office of Sustainability will look into the scope of work and its costs over the next few months, then present it to city council. Wright said the air quality tests needed could cost roughly $100,000.
"It's a pretty high priority, so we're going to see where we can pull that [money] from," Wright said. There are options the city will explore to have the tests funded by means outside of city dollars, including county dollars, and through the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Roughly 6,570 people live in Childs Park. In 2020, there were approximately 1,400 housing units in the neighborhood.
If you need to report an odor concern in Pinellas County, you can file an outdoor air quality complaint through the Pinellas County Citizen Access Portal. A video tutorial and step-by-step instructions are available to assist you in creating an online account in the portal. You can also call Air Quality at 727-464-4422.