JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — One neighborhood is not getting any relief from a chemical odor that is permeating their homes.
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Action News Jax has been reporting on this for years, but new developments reveal one company may be trying to cover its tracks.
Neighbors tell Action News Jax Annette Gutierrez, that there is a group of people going door-to-door in nearby communities asking neighbors to sign a paper saying there is not a “smell” problem.
The City of Jacksonville has data proving otherwise. A city spokesperson said they’ve already received dozens of complaints across the city this month and we’re only 9 days in.
“It’s an obnoxious smell,” Murray Hill resident Michael Hammond said. “(t smells like – the best I can describe – pine sol or turpentine.”
It’s a smell that has brought countless complaints from people living in areas from Commonwealth to Biltmore and Murray Hill to Riverside.
Neighbors said their complaints have triggered one company to try to hide their tracks.
“At first, they did not address who they were, which was very concerning,” neighbor Aidyn Quintana said. “I thought they were for the people honestly to address what was going on with the smells.”
Quintana said on Tuesday, she was approached by two men asking her to sign paperwork.
“As I went further into it, it said ‘sign here if you think that we don’t take responsibility for this’ and things like that,” Quintana said. “I was like, ‘no I can’t state that this is not causing us harm.’”
When she didn’t sign the papers, her surveillance camera captured one of the men ripping up the document.
Another neighbor from Murray Hill said these same men were at her door last week. She wanted to remain anonymous and not be identified by IFF. But she said they told her they were working for “International Flavors and Fragrances” - a company named in Jacksonville’s “stink study” of the area.
IFF has been cited twice and is under a compliance plan with the city.
The neighbor said after the men couldn’t get her to say there was no smell, they tried passing the blame to another company.
“They started trying to say that it was the Revlon, that it was closer to us than the IFF, that they were with IFF,” the neighbor said.
We reached out to the city about the stink problem, and their data reveals just this month, they’ve gotten 56 complaints.
But, for any 90 days, the city can’t find IFF because of the compliance plan.
The plan states that if five or more odor complaints from different households were validated within any 90 days within the first six months after the physical modifications were completed, then the IFF and the City will have to negotiate amendments to further mitigate odors.
A city spokesperson said this threshold has been met and the city’s Environmental Quality Division is currently in the process of setting up a meeting with IFF and their attorneys.
Hammond had a message for the city, saying, “As the permit comes up for renewal, just keep in mind that there’s a difference between putting measures in place to eliminate the odor, and actually eliminating the odor.”
Action News Jax reached out to IFF, and we’re still waiting to hear back.
The city spokesperson also said they can’t comment on the video without having more information.
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