By Alexis Poggendick
For 20 years, residents of Childs Park have reported a persistent odor, prompting ongoing concern from the local community.
The foul odors permeating throughout the neighborhood left residents near Childs Park uneasy about where the smell stemmed from and what caused it. The concern among residents had reached more official hands as the compliments found their way to neighborhood representatives.
Brother John Muhammad, president of the Childs Park Neighborhood Association, has been active in the Childs Park community for over two decades. In 2018, Muhammad and fellow neighborhood association members began investigating what they could do to combat the issue.
“We initiated a campaign called ‘Smell Something, Say Something’ to basically bring awareness to these obnoxious odors that have been coming from a particular facility in our community,” Muhammad said.
In 2022, the Childs Park Neighborhood Association organized a Google Forms document to distribute the campaign and further collect compliments about the odors from residents in the area. The Google Form document was live for 90 days.
“We received more complaints in those 90 days than we had in maybe eight or nine years about this particular issue,” Muhammad said.
The Google Forms then developed into a more efficient way to collect and organize complaints after Muhammad worked with city officials.
“We began working with county officials once we found out that it was one of them that was responsible for air quality,” Muhammad said.
After formally filing complainants with the county, Muhammad was told that the city had received no complaints about the odors themselves.
Sheila Schneider, division manager for Pinellas County air quality, had closely dealt with the complaints from residents.
“We are intimately aware of the issues in that neighborhood,” Schneider said. “We respond to odor complaints as timely as we possibly can.”
Officials at the Pinellas County Air Quality Division were aware of Muhammad’s “Smell Something, Say Something” campaign.
“We have a long history with Brother John,” Schneider said.
Chris Brodeur, of the Pinellas County Air Quality Division, expressed his thoughts on the success of Muhammad’s campaign.
“The ‘Smell Something, Say Something’ campaign was not effective as far as our air quality division is concerned,” Brodeur said. “Odors are fleeting. They do not stick around.”
Pinellas County officials can only act on odor complaints if they were on-site when the odor occurred. Reports filed days later prevented officials from taking action.
Brodeur said that some of the odors may have come from permitted businesses and facilities in the Childs Park neighborhood as well as from animal carcasses found in the area.
Shortly after the “Smell Something, Say Something” campaign launched, Pinellas County developed their own online forum for residents throughout the county to report complaints of foul odors.
“It’s a much more timely method to report as long as they don’t wait until tomorrow to report yesterday’s complaint,” Schneider said.
Residents were advised to file complaints as soon as odors were noticed.
“[Resident’s complaints] need to be a little more definitive,” Brodeur said. “The description of ‘gas’ doesn’t help us a lot.”
To report additional complaints about the odors and air quality, residents can use the SeeClickFix.com website implemented by the county.
