Bastrop 'death' smell complaints near all-time high
Editor's Note: The video above features coverage of previous complaints from Nov. 13, 2024.
BASTROP, Texas (KXAN) – Fall is in the air in Central Texas. Or, for a growing chorus of residents living around a Bastrop-area animal byproduct rendering facility, it's more rancid death.
Grievances about Darling Ingredients’ rendering plant in the Camp Swift area are nearing an all-time high this year, according to complaint records from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It's no surprise to the company, which told KXAN "we deeply regret the frustration of the local community."
There have been over 500 complaints against the facility in the past 20 years, with more than 300 of those lodged in the past two years. The complaints have resulted in multiple TCEQ investigations and violations against the company. Nevertheless, residents say the odors continue.
It’s “a mixture between death and feces,” said Joy Casnovsky, an Elgin City Council Member since 2022. Casnovsky told KXAN the smells are becoming more frequent – travelling 10 miles north to her town, most often with prevailing southern winds in the warmer months.
Banding together
Casnovsky is helping lead a growing group of residents who have banded together to raise awareness of the odor issue. They’ve spoken at a TCEQ meeting and held a town hall. They’ve created a website, “Stop the Stink Bastrop,” that channels people to the TCEQ’s complaint page. Perhaps it is no coincidence the number of complaints against the rendering facility is reaching record levels. The nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen has also joined the effort.
It isn’t just the immediate neighbors sounding the alarm. Complaints are emanating from 10 miles north in Elgin and about the same distance south in Tahitian Village – a neighborhood on the southern side of Bastrop.
“The emissions that they are violating, the pollution, you know, the hydrogen sulfide, the other things that are harmful to oneself, I think they consider that the cost of doing business, unfortunately,” Casnovsky said.
'We hear you,' company said about complaints
Darling Ingredients told KXAN it is working to comply with environmental regulations and spending millions to address the odor issue.
The Bastrop facility recycles poultry byproducts, including feathers, into fuel and animal food. It’s a process “giving every end a new beginning,” according to the company’s website.
“Community concerns are important to us, and we are committed to being a good neighbor," a Darling Ingredients spokesperson told KXAN by email. "We are engaging with local leaders to discuss these issues and have several projects either underway or already completed to upgrade the facility and optimize reliability.”
Darling Ingredients said it recently withdrew a request to alter its air permit after its engineering team found a way to manage the process under its current permitted limits.
The company also posted its own webpage dedicated to acknowledging the odors and explaining the company’s multilevel approach to addressing them.
“We hear you,” Darling Ingredients said, in a message to Bastrop County. The Bastrop facility employs about 100 people. On top of handling poultry byproducts, it turns used cooking oil into renewable fuel. It’s big business. Through a joint venture, Darling Ingredients is “one of the largest renewable fuel and sustainable aviation fuel producers in the world,” according its website.
The company has more than 260 facilities in 15 countries and a market cap over $5 billion.
At the Bastrop facility, Darling Ingredients estimates it is investing more than $20 million to improve wastewater treatment, air protection technology, odor control improvements and better reliability for processing equipment, according to the website.
Even with all that, nearby residents like Casnovsky said they aren’t convinced and will continue their campaign to pressure TCEQ and the company until the odors cease.
TCEQ order
Casnovsky said her goal is to have TCEQ hear the people’s voices, since that agency has regulatory authority over the matter. She helped organize a group to speak at a TCEQ hearing on July 9, when the agency approved an “agreed order” for Darling Ingredients with a $39,000 penalty. The group also spoke at an October TCEQ meeting, she said.
A TCEQ spokesperson said the agency is “actively engaged” with Darling Ingredients to monitor its progress toward compliance with the order.
The order also contained corrective actions, including measures to reduce hydrogen sulfide concentrations at the ground level, development of an odor control plan, detailed record keeping and proper operation and maintenance of the plant to minimize odors. Hydrogen sulfide is a colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs and is a by-product of the animal rendering process. High levels can be extremely toxic to humans. At low levels, which TCEQ has detected near the Bastrop facility, the gas can cause eye irritation, headaches and fatigue, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
TCEQ recently issued a notice of violation to Darling Ingredients on Sept. 15 regarding air permit requirements, and the agency has two open investigations related to ongoing air and wastewater complaints, as well as air permit requirements.
Casnovsky and the contingent of citizens raising complaints about Darling Ingredients’ odors met and connected with Public Citizen at the TCEQ’s meeting on July 9. Since then, Public Citizen – a national nonprofit advocacy organization – has been supporting the effort.
'Reluctant regulator'
Kathryn Guerra, Public Citizen’s TCEQ campaign director, has been supporting the effort. She used to work at TCEQ doing compliance assistance and was in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Division for a region that included Texas.
Guerra described TCEQ as a “reluctant regulator” that has “time and again, demonstrated that they will side with industry at the expense of communities.”
Once a business is under enforcement by TCEQ – for example, like Darling Ingredients’ Bastrop facility has been since fall of 2024 – the agency does not take additional enforcement measures against them for the same violation, Guerra said.
Darling’s agreed order stipulates compliance by January 2026 for a violation that started in July 2024, she added. KXAN sent Guerra's comments to the TCEQ and asked for a response — the agency reiterated it continues to investigate complaints and issue violations if any are found, and said reports on current investigations will be available on its website once they're complete.
“Darling is a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and they have some of the very best PR folks who are able to assure (residents) that Darling is going to move forward and be a good neighbor,” Guerra told KXAN in an interview. “It's time for Darling to actually be that good neighbor that they tell folks that they want to be.”
KXAN also spoke to Courtney Kellogg, a Bastrop resident in Tahitian Village. Even there, 10 miles south of the facility, she is more frequently catching foul odors.
“We used to smell it maybe like once or twice a year, maybe five times, give or take, a year,” said Kellogg, who has lived there since 2017. “Over the past couple years, it's way more frequent. I mean, to the point where you can't count.”
Kellogg said she appreciates Darling’s recycling work, but not if it is harming the community in the process. Perhaps, she said, an entirely different company should come in that can run their own plant without these odor problems.
“I don't know that you should have endless chances to be like a good neighbor,” Kellogg said. “At what point are your profits going to keep coming at the expense of a whole community? How do you keep justifying that?”
Despite all that, there is at least one resident living near the facility who doesn’t see, or smell, much of problem with Darling’s operation.
A voice of support
Amanda, who asked that we only use her first name because she did not want to deal with blowback from the community, has been living within a mile of the plant for most of the past 43 years.
KXAN met and spoke with Amanda on the side of the road just outside the Darling plant.
When an odor does hit her house, she said it usually smells like dog food. Sometimes the air has a more sour tang, and there’s occasionally a dirty dishwater smell. None of those bother her much, she said, and it seems like people who have moved to the area recently are the ones who are complaining the most.
“They really do contain themselves quite well, I think,” said Amanda, who noted she had no personal or business ties to Darling Ingredients. “They’ve been great neighbors.”
Regarding the multiple violations against Darling Ingredients, Amanda said she “really can't speak on their behalf or what the reasoning for that is, but I do know that I really don't worry about it.”
Amanda seems to be in the minority, at least among people who have reached out to KXAN about the facility and its odors.
Complaints to TCEQ are well documented. One resident wrote to the agency in July: “Elgin is becoming known as the “Stinky” Town and it is not a good ole sausage stink. It’s the bad old sickening stuff that made me nauseous.”
TCEQ’s agreed order from July notes the agency’s own workers “detected strong to very strong offensive odors” during visits last year while conducting odor surveys.
TCEQ has two pending investigations into the Darling Ingredients facility. KXAN will continue to monitor the impact of the agency’s orders, investigations and the facility’s upgrades.