BETHLEHEM, Pa. – People in one part of Bethlehem are speaking out about an unpleasant smell coming from a nearby factory.<\/p>\n
They say the odor has been an issue for years and they’re hoping for a permanent solution.<\/p>\n
People who live in West Bethlehem say they’re fed up with a strong, unpleasant smell coming from this local manufacturer.<\/p>\n
“When they let it go, it lingers. It’s not 15 minutes and it’s gone, it’s here for eight hours,” says George Andrews, a resident who\u2019s concerned about smell.<\/p>\n
Neighbors say when the smell is produced, you can’t miss it. And as the weather gets warmer, the odor is impacting their quality of life.<\/p>\n
“You wanna walk the dog you can get down to the stop sign and when they release it you gotta come back up you go in the swimming pool and they release it you gotta get out of your swimming pool,” says Andrews.<\/p>\n
The manufacturer makes powdered foods and drinks.<\/p>\n
State Representative Jeanne McNeill says her office and the Department of Environmental Protection have been getting constant calls from people who live near the factory.<\/p>\n
Spray-Tek has been cited by the DEP and currently owes the agency $16,000 in fines.<\/p>\n
“Right now, there’s a temporary filter in place to tone down the odors, and Spray-Tek has applied according to DEP, Spray-Tek has applied for a more permanent one,” says Rep. McNeill.<\/p>\n
According to the DEP, the smell is not harmful.<\/p>\n
Representative McNeill says she’s looking into legislation to solve the issue for good.<\/p>\n
“They need to step up and fix this permanently because it’s not fair and paying these fines is not doing anything,” she says.<\/p>\n
69 News reached out to the City of Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson issued a response saying that the DEP has control over air quality issues and that, “As a courtesy to our residents, we have reached out directly to the PA DEP to reiterate their complaints about bad odors. We have asked for any additional information they can provide about the status of any investigations or compliance actions but have not received any new information yet.”<\/p>\n
We also reached out to Spray-Tek and so far, we have not heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – People in one part of Bethlehem are speaking out about an unpleasant smell coming from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[30257,153,155,154,4771,16384,82564,393,45257,2889,8432,82563],"class_list":["post-184906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-air-quality","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-department-of-environmental-protection","tag-factory","tag-fines","tag-legislation","tag-odor","tag-pollution","tag-residents","tag-spray-tek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184906","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=184906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}