JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- It may be the perfume of progress to local industry, but the rotten-egg pall that hangs over the city has become such an issue that Mayor Tommy Hazouri was elected last year on an anti-odor campaign.
'If there's one issue that transcends this city, rich and poor, black and white, it's the odor issue,' Hazouri said. 'Odor is the only issue keeping us from being a world-class city.'
In his eight months in office Hazouri has demoted Jacksonville's pollution control chief, hired eight more odor fighters for the city of 610,000, fired up his legal staff to take polluters to court and formed a stink strike force with State Attorney Ed Austin.
Last week the City Council passed a tough new anti-odor law. If five people in five households complain of a smell and an inspector can track down the source of the aroma, the offender could face up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine in criminal penalties and civil penalties of up to $10,000.
Hazouri said two pulp mills and three chemical plants are the smelliest offenders. But officials at those industries complain they are being unfairly singled out and that the new law is too vague to withstand a court challenge.
'You may as well call it 'The Lawyers Relief Act of 1988,'' said George Robbins, president of SCM-Glidco Organics chemical company. 'We'll make a hell of a lot of lawyers a hell of a lot richer than they are now.'
Frank Lee, general manager of the Seminole Kraft pulp mill, said his company already has already spent $7 million to reduce odor, and by November 1992 the plant will boast a new $75 million recovery boiler that will diminish odors even more.
Officials with other companies said they also have spent millions on odor control, but they don't believe the problem will ever go away.
'No right-thinking person would ever say, 'I'm for odor,'' Lee said. 'But pulp mills have always had odor problems and always will.'
