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County identifies possible source of foul odor in Gainesville

File photo: Steve Hofstetter speaks to the Alachua County Commission on December 10, 2024

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. – According to an email from Alachua County Environmental Protection Department Director Steve Hofstetter, the foul odor reported around Gainesville may be caused by chicken litter manure/fertilizer spread over large agricultural tracts in the Brooker area.

Hofstetter wrote that an individual was applying the manure/fertilizer to over 30 acres in the Brooker area off of CR 231. The fertilizer was originally applied on Thursday and Friday (Jan. 2 and 3) and was expected to be tilled into the soil beginning today, “which should largely reduce the odor.”

“However,” Hofstetter wrote, “we may have some additional odor days with cold morning temperatures and wind out of the North and have started to receive additional calls.”

The County has contacted the State to determine whether the application is consistent with Best Management Practices and will rely on the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to investigate the incident further.

  • Whatever was going on, if it was the chicken-sh*t, it was not in accordance with anything remotely resembling “best practices.”

    • Yeah yeah it is from the chickens in Brooker. It has nothing to do with the Taco Bell buffet I emptied the other night before the sh*tty meeting I mean city meeting.

  • We have chickens. That was not chicken poop. How in the world was the smell in different parts of Gainesville? The wind was not blowing in all different directions. I call BS on this excuse.

    • I agree. I also have many chickens & use their manure in my veggy gardens and this odor in the air was not like that smell at all. It smelled like human waste.

  • And it got piped in to downtown Gainesville so concentrated it was intensely aromatic ,yet not as noticeable in a supposed path from Brooker? I guess smells of a feather flock together.

  • Well, at least it’s not a giant flaming cow turd collection.

    This has happened a few times around the country.

    The stinky fires lasted for a long time.

  • Santa Clause took a big bump after eating Ms. Clause cookies and forgot to flush, causing North Pole winds to blow to aroma South.

  • I’ve cleaned out chicken coops before and that is NOT the smell.
    Rather the “foul odor” around town has a sulfur like smell similar to what you smell down wind from a paper mill.

  • Odor is going to disperse quickly, so 30 acres affecting a big part of the entire county doesn’t sound reasonable. Something in the water or gas supply lines sounds more feasible.

  • Farm county
    Just 🐔 poop poop

    Breathe deep you glows
    The drum stick 🐔 pooppoop

    It too will pass.
    Amen ☘️

  • I remember someone doing that in Jax on a farm decades ago . . . learned that the product is very ‘hot.’ Burned bahia grass pretty badly. I don’t think he used it again.

  • Here comes scamdemic #2 *cough* I mean bird flu *cough cough* I meant chicken poop,since that’s all this is huh? 🤨

    • Y’all haven’t had a “strange fog” over there lately have you? Other people around the country have been reporting strange fogs when there shouldn’t be any and then bad smells afterward. Been reading about them for the last couple of weeks off and on…

      • I was looking to see if anyone mentioned this. A strange fog rolled in with the rain a couple of weeks ago (or more). It kind of looked like snowflakes falling with the rain. I figured it was pollen or something from a sycamore tree.
        All of us got the worse case of flu we’ve ever had, high temperatures, awful body aches, coughing, nauseated. My family still have coughing and other symptoms.
        I’m immune compromised because I have MS & RA, I’m going through it now for the second time.
        I’m a retired nurse, I can tell you, this stuff is real, and it’s ALL over the world now. I think it’s also hurting my left kidney. There is no telling what’s going on…..but, I’d bet that Bill Gates and Fauci have collaborated with China to cause this. The Senate proved Fauci guilty of the “for gain” intent with Wuhan to geoengineer that pandemic.

        When in times past would a sitting “president” not act with a Chinese balloon drifting across our country, or had fleets of “drones” hovering over our cities, AND be on tv to tell us what’s going on? We have wicked people in high places.

        • TRIBULATIONS ARE DEFINITELY HAPPENING….WARS, DISEASE, FIRES, SAME SEX OKAY, KIDS TURNING AWAY FROM PARENTS…..PEOPLE NEED TO PAY ATTENTION…REPENT….GET RIGHT WITH OUR JESUS …

  • The source is the concentrated stream of bull manure constantly streaming out of Gainesville City Hall.

  • This is the Mayor and I assure you that it was just me burping the steak ate 2 weeks ago using tax payers dollars, ummm… sorry bout that!

  • That’s horse s__t. (No pun intended.) The stench was overpowering all the way from Haile Plantation across town to Satchel’s Pizza. This explanation is insulting.

  • It’s now they notice it smells like raw chicken. It’s been smelling like that for years now in gainesville. Lol

  • No matter what their employees are forced to say, this sh** comes from GNVCC and AC BOCC!

  • Seems like nobody has really identified anything stinky. At the top of our hill at NW 91st St and Newberry Rd., the giant cement trucks still come thru before dawn going to Miami. And every morning, trashy ashes from burning earth at the cement plant cover my clean car. No birds, no squirrels, no snakes, no crows.

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