Picture taken from the top of a mound at the former Fresh Kills landfill Tuesday, May 24, 2022 shows part of the area's waterway and Staten Island's industrial West Shore. (Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A foul smell wafting through the air near Travis in recent weeks has caught the noses of some wary residents already fatigued from living near the borough’s now-closed landfills.

“It smells like garbage. Like what, are we back to that again?”, mused Jennifer Kaya, a Cannon Avenue resident.

Kaya said the smell is not present daily. “It comes and goes,” she told the Advance/SILive.com. “It smelled like the dumps were open again like a big truck was here and he didn’t take the garbage.”

Another resident, Nancy, who asked to only have her first name printed, thought the odor was chemical at first and said she was experiencing headaches from the smell.

“I mostly smelled it at night,” she said, adding that the aroma was also noticeable sometimes in the early morning. “It was very odd.”

The smell was described by other nearby homeowners as akin to rotten eggs. The FDNY and National Grid have even been called in Travis to investigate if the smell was gas-related; however, both agencies did not find any evidence of a leak.

Hypothesis were plentiful. The Pratt Industries Staten Island Paper Mill, located at the end of Victory Boulevard, was thought to be a potential culprit.

Muneer Ahmad, the general manager of the facility who has been present at the location since 1996, said the facility processes 100% recycled paper.

“We’re taking waste paper that comes out of the street, just processing it through the pulper,” said Ahmad. “There is no foul odor, no odor at all.”

He explained that some other factories, known as kraft mills, have a much more intensive process that creates a black liquor byproduct that can carry a wretched odor with it. But, the Staten Island facility simply processes paper into hot water before running it through a cleaning process.

Unsure of where the odor originates from, Ahmad said a nearby city Sanitation Department (DSNY) transfer station could be to blame.

The Staten Island facility, located at 600 West Service Road, sits less than a mile from the borough’s paper mill.

However, a DSNY spokesman explained advanced technology at the agency’s transfer stations works to keep it from spilling into the surrounding areas.

“Our Waste Transfer Stations all have sophisticated odor control systems that utilize negative pressurization, ceiling fans and misters to keep odors inside the building,” said Vincent Gragnani, a DSNY spokesman. “Even the doors that let our collection trucks in and out remain closed most of the day, opening only for trucks to enter and exit, in order to maintain the negative pressurization and keep the air inside.”

“All waste leaves the facility in sealed containers,” said Gragnani.

The source of the smell, some experts believe, could be far more natural.

Jose Ramirez-Garofalo, a PhD student at Rutgers University who conducts research on Staten Island, said marshes in the area have the tendency to give off foul smells, especially during heat waves like the one Staten Island has recently experienced.

“I’m actually kind of surprised that this is the first time people are noticing it,” he said.

Marshes in the area give off odors on a regular basis due to sulfur-containing compounds that come off of decaying organic material, Carl Alderson, a former Staten Islander and the Mid-Atlantic restoration coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Fisheries’ Habitat Restoration Center, explained in an email.

The smell could sometimes become exceptionally strong due to higher volumes of decaying material, which occurs when there has been an excessive production of algae. When that algae begins to rot and decay, “the smell can be overwhelming,” said Alderson.

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