Residents complain of lingering smell in Hollister

An unpleasant smell has been lingering around the Hollister area and some residents want to know what’s causing it.

Depending on where you were this weekend, maybe you smelled it.

“It was really just like, bleh. Kind of like garbage, like burning garbage,” a Hollister resident said.

Many of you made a stink about it on Facebook saying it was the cannery. One person wrote, ‘It smelled like chemicals to me,’ while another said ‘It smells like rotten eggs.’

We went to City Hall to clear the air over the pungent odor.

The city said it came from two sources. One of them, San Benito Foods processing plant where it’s tomato canning season. The other source — the industrial treatment plant that treats the cannery’s dirty water.

“If pH levels aren’t the same, or the enzymes aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing and there’s not enough oxygen in the water for the bugs, that’s when we can get a slight odor and in this case it was a little more severe than in years past,” said Hollister City Manager William Avera.

It was severe enough to get the attention of the Monterey Bay Air Resource District, that has taken four complaints between Friday and Monday. They told KION in a statement:

“MBARD has received a number of complaints and we are in the process of investigating, following up with complaints and working with staff to make sure they’re taking reasonable measures to mitigate the odors that may be coming from their ponds and associated storm drains.”

Field staffers said they’ve met with San Benito Foods to address the aroma, while the city is installing submersible aerators to see if that’ll help.

“First off the message is that we apologize, it’s not done on purpose. We try to handle it as quickly and efficiently as we can be,” Avera said.

KION did reach out to San Benito Foods and haven’t heard back.