Ranches’ Odor Prompts Effort to Clear the Air : Agriculture: Complaints from neighbors are increasing over the smell of chicken manure at two egg companies.

The 3.5 million workers at Egg City and Eggs West are raising a stink, and their neighbors don’t like it.

The workers are chickens, and the odor of their droppings will be the subject of a meeting today between city and county officials and the operators of the two egg ranches near Moorpark.

The malodor--described by one Fillmore resident as “gaggy”--has been the continuing source of complaints from nearby residents and is expected to get worse during the hot summer months.

Said one golfer at a nearby course: “It’ll clear your sinuses.”

At the meeting, representatives of several public agencies, including the county Air Pollution Control District, will try to persuade the egg ranchers to do something about the smell.

Specifically, they want the ranches to consider using a product that acts like an outdoor odor eater to reduce the stink from the 410 tons of chicken manure produced each day at the ranches.

Aside from friendly persuasion, officials from the county and surrounding cities said they have little power over the egg ranches, because agricultural operations are exempt from state laws that prohibit public nuisances.

Egg City, which was once the largest egg producer in the world, has been operating since 1960 and has about 3 million chickens. Eggs West, which has about half a million chickens, opened four years later.

Complaints about the stench have been common in Fillmore, about eight miles north of the ranches. But the complaints have increased during the past five years as the city has expanded.

Operators of the two ranches say they have tried to respond by making changes in their operations, such as collecting the manure daily. But they question whether the odor-eating liquid will be successful at killing the stench.

Although Jerry Kimmel, a consultant for Eggs West, said he will listen to the sales pitch for the product, Egg City Chief Executive Richard Carrot criticized county and Fillmore officials for providing a forum for a sales pitch.

“If the county is out selling products, I hope they are getting a stiff commission,” he said.

The product, sold by Environmental Materials and Services in Agoura Hills, includes a microorganism that competes for food sources with the bacteria that cause odors, said company president Dale Hallcom.

He said his company has been selling the product, known as EMSC, since 1969 and has successfully tested it on chicken, horse and cattle manure.

“Everything we do is totally safe,” he said. “We can even drink the product.”

Allen Danzig, an enforcement manager with the county Air Pollution Control District, said he sprayed EMSC on crates of chicken manure and found that within three days, the manure was dried and the odor was reduced by 70% in one sample and 90% in another.

EMSC is sold in a solid form for $50 a pound, which can be mixed with water to make up to 35 gallons of spray. Hallcom said Egg City would probably need about 32,000 gallons of the product per week.

Al Escoto, an aide for Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee, said he helped arrange the meeting in response to a stream of odor complaints that the supervisor and Fillmore officials have been receiving over the years.

He said the meeting is designed simply to present the egg ranchers with a possible solution to the stench problem. “We just think there may be a product that might be a viable solution to this,” he said.

Peggy Hungate, a longtime Fillmore resident, hopes so.

“It’s driving us crazy,” she said as she and her husband, Sam, headed to lunch at the Elkins Ranch Golf Course, which is between the ranches and Fillmore.

“You have to hold you breath all the way over Grimes Canyon Road,” she said, referring to the road that passes by the ranches.

She described the smell as “horrendous” and “gaggy.”

A golfer who declined to give his name called it “horrible.” But he added: “It all depends on the breeze.”

The consensus at Elkins Ranch is that the smell is worse after 4 p.m. when the wind tends to carry the odor past the golf course and into Fillmore.

Said golf pro Terry Taylor: “My personal opinion is that it doesn’t bother me until about 5 in the afternoon.”