A Barrio Logan company that turns cooking oil into diesel fuel is under fire for the smell generated in their refining process. Neighbors want the smell to stop immediately.
“We perfectly understand that the neighbors find this to be a nuisance but it’s not hazardous chemicals,” said Chris White, the Chief Operating Officer of New Leaf Biofuel. “There’s nothing hazardous about this. It is used cooking oil. It’s the oil that was cooking your fries a week ago.”
The company has been working with air pollution regulators to come up with a solution and they just recently got approval to install an odor control system.“Activated carbon is an acknowledged odor control solution that’s used widely in many industries for absorbing precisely the sort of chemicals that are in used cooking oil to control odor,” White said.
The company has the filters but is waiting for an industrial fan for the odor control system. It is not expected to arrive until the end of November. But another month of odors is too much for a community that’s been dealing with the smell for nearly a year. “We need an immediate pause on all operations at New Leaf Biofuel until they can show us that there’s an operating odor control system,” said Nicholas Paul, a member of the Environmental Health Coalition .