{"id":126809,"date":"2026-03-01T15:21:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T15:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/126809\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T15:21:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T15:21:06","slug":"west-wyoming-kratom-plant-nuisance-hearing-to-resume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/126809\/","title":{"rendered":"West Wyoming kratom plant nuisance hearing to resume"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hearing to determine whether the odor emanating from a West Wyoming kratom plant constitutes a quality-of-life violation is set to resume Tuesday in Luzerne County court.<\/p>\n

The plant, KB Crash Creations, and the owner of the property at 223 W. Sixth St.<\/a>, Donald J. Zurenda, are each facing 30 quality-of-life citations alleging the odor created during the facility\u2019s kratom-production process is a nuisance to neighbors.<\/p>\n

A hearing before Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Vough began in January but was continued until Tuesday due to the high number of witnesses expected to testify.<\/p>\n

The 30 citations filed on each defendant represent complaints from 14 victims,\u00a0special prosecutor Laura Dennis-Bovani has said.<\/p>\n

She has described the odor coming from the plant as similar to an \u201corange Pine Sol chemical smell.\u201d Wyoming Area Regional Police Chief Michael Turner<\/a> described the aroma as \u201ctoxic\u201d during the first segment of the hearing.<\/p>\n

The company, however, argues that the smell is not nearly as bad as some neighbors portray and maintains that it is harmless in any event.<\/p>\n

KB Crash is a business that extracts kratom, which comes from the leaves of a tropical tree that grows in Southeast Asia, and sells the resulting powder wholesale to manufacturers of kratom products.<\/p>\n

During the extraction process, the company says it uses a solvent known as D-limonene \u2014 a natural compound extracted from citrus fruit peels that is in widespread commercial usage.<\/p>\n

Wayne Bendistis, the company\u2019s director of operations, has described the smell as an orange odor and maintains it is \u201cnot wildly offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some in the neighborhood, however, allege they get headaches and feel irritation while breathing as a result of the smell.<\/p>\n

Last year, the state Department of Environmental Protection filed two notices of violation against the business alleging it \u201cinstalled a tea production line and began operation\u201d without a permit and that it also \u201cpermitted the emission of malodorous air contaminants into the outdoor atmosphere in such a manner that the malodors were detectable outside of KB Crash Creations property.\u201d<\/p>\n

In both cases, the department alleged the violations amounted to \u201cunlawful conduct and a public nuisance\u201d and asked the company to submit a permit application along with written corrective action plans.<\/p>\n

Testimony regarding the nuisance violation citations will resume in Vough\u2019s courtroom at 9 a.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hearing to determine whether the odor emanating from a West Wyoming kratom plant constitutes a quality-of-life violation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[46,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,802,4489],"class_list":["post-126809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-courts","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc","tag-west-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}