‘Rotting Fish’ Smell Made Investigators Sick, Canceled Recess Near Chicago Plant: Illinois Lawsuit

And you thought your local paper mill was bad.

One sign of living in the Midwest is that some kind of manufacturing plant in some town down the road is stinky. Eastern Iowa has the Purina plant in Clinton, Cedar Rapids is the "city of five smells" with Quaker Oats and General Mills there.

One vegetable oil plant in Illinois is the subject of a lawsuit from the state due to it's odor and air pollution problems.

Unsplash

In the lawsuit that's Illinois vs. A-F Acquisitions LLC (Pullman Innovations), the city alleges that the strongly unpleasant odor has forced kids to stay inside from recess and keeps a lot of people inside with their windows shut.

The complaints have been coming from residents for years and finally things have been done about it. The previous plant that had been at the site had been there since 1984 but Pullman acquired it in 2016.

After a newspaper piece in 2023 about the plant found that the city wasn't doing much to deter pollution, the Illinois EPA inspected it for themselves and validated the complaints. Their investigators' report to the Illinois Attorney General's office said the plant had a "very strong odor that could best be described as rotting fish/decay of flesh" and it made them "not want to breathe and made us nauseous".

Google reviews say you can smell the plant from far away.

Officials are arguing the problem goes beyond just the stink. They're saying Pullman operated in ways that could make air pollution worse and the plant didn't meet boiler permitting requirements.

Fast Forward To Now

Letters went out to 2,400 residents that have lived nearby since 2018 about an undetermined amount of money in a lawsuit.

The lawsuit intends to force Pullman to deal with the odors and comply with environmental laws.