One by one – from young parents to empty-nest retirees -- residents began to form a line in the middle of the room, patiently waiting for their chance to speak to the state’s leading health, environmental and agricultural experts. When they got to the microphone, they effectively opened the door to their homes and introduced the experts to what they endure every day. They brought them into their basements, where they have been forced to replace household appliances that have been severely damaged from exposure to Hydrogen Sulfide gases. They brought them to their backyards where their children play within site of nearby mushroom facilities. Finally, they brought them into the impact these odors were having on their overall health.  

Landenberg Hunt resident Ron Lupo has been instrumental in helping to galvanize his neighbors’ concerns and share them with elected officials like Rep. Christina Sappey and the New Garden Township Board of Supervisors. At one point during the meeting, he showed state officials photographs of corroded meter boxes and HVAC units from the neighborhood and referred to the clouds created in the production of mushrooms as “the Plume of Doom in our neighborhood.”  

For some, the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute feedback session served as the residents’ first opportunity to publicly address what had been up to that point confined to frustrations shared only with their families and neighbors. For others – specifically several residents who live in the Landenberg Hunt community – their comments were merely an affirmation of what they had already shared with the Chester County Press at two earlier meetings: the first in the summer of 2023 and the second this past January. 

These are their stories.  

Ammonia, raw sewage and stench 

The Landenberg Hunt development is a winding trail of 43 well-kept homes off Starr Road, wedged between the New Garden Township Building to the east and a mushroom growing facility to the west. From forever home to forever home, there is every indication that a sense of permanence exists there, and that roots have been staked firmly in the ground: children’s play equipment, basketball hoops in blacktop driveways, rocking chairs on front porches and a nearly continuous sweep of manicured lawns and gardens.  

Over the past year, the Chester County Press had become informed of the growing concern of the developments’ residents by Lupo and Don Morgan, a fellow Landenberg resident, who have shared information and history, and last August, at their invitation, a Chester County Press reporter drove to the development, where in the backyard of long-time residents Jerry and Laurie Hauck, he heard the testimony of more than one dozen of the Hauck’s neighbors. 

For more than one hour, the group spoke about the encroaching impact that the composting processes at nearby mushroom facilities were having on their homes. They described the persistent odor as smelling like “ammonia,” “raw sewage” and “stench,” and as supporting evidence, they displayed examples of household appliances and precious heirloom jewelry that had been corroded beyond repair by the lingering and aggressive effects of Hydrogen Sulfide.  

Their stories were personal and their expenses costly: one resident said that he has been forced to replace his home’s heating device eight times. Another neighbor said that air conditioning service contractors have told him that they refuse to service homes in Landenberg Hunt because of the frequency of their visits. 

Two new residents to the neighborhood – young mothers with small children – said they moved to the Landenberg Hunt to take advantage of the superb public schools for their children.  

“We did not know that a mushroom composting facility was nearby, because we didn’t drive around the corner when we first bought our house,” one mother said. “On inspection day, it smelled horrific, and my husband and I smelled a chemical smell. After the inspection, I saw my husband crying in the backyard. He told me that we lived right next to a mushroom composting farm. I called the business the next day and they told me that it’s a lot like living next to a pig farm.  

“We moved in and less than a month later, my daughter’s nose was constantly stuffy, and she was always getting sick and had difficulty breathing. My son was all of a sudden coming down with allergies. We had to get air purifiers in their bedrooms. In the middle of the night, you smell sulfur coming into the house.” 

“If it is corroding our cars and our appliances, what is it doing to the inside of our bodies?” the other woman asked.  

Like thousands of their fellow residents in southern Chester County last summer, however, those living in the Landenberg Hunt development waited in anticipation for the results of the PADOH survey before they could truly galvanize, armed with pertinent facts that could definitively justify their concerns. 

On January 18, when 25 neighbors from the Landenberg Hunt development met at the New Garden Township Building at a town hall meeting moderated by township board chairman Steve Allaband, the results of the PADOH survey were still three months away. 

‘You hold your breath and run to your car’ 

For more than one hour, the concerns that the residents had expressed echoed from the summer before and reverberated around the cavernous township meeting room. The first to speak was Lupo, who said that when he and his family first moved to the development in 1997, the odors were moderate, but they have gotten exceedingly worse in the past 15 years. 

“I think it’s time we address this problem, because there are ways to correct the problem,” he said. “We have to make it known to the mushroom industry that the maintenance on our homes is coming out of our pockets because of them. We need to get this straightened out and find a way forward.” 

When Josh and Brittany Blacker moved into the development in 2019, their home had a brand-new HVAC unit. Within one year, several of its coils had disintegrated. After two winters without heat and two summers without air conditioning, last winter – with two newborn daughters coming home from the hospital – they were forced to replace their unit at a cost of $16,000. 

Isaiah Hollis and his wife moved into the development seven years ago. 

“At least once a month, my wife is not feeling well,” he said. “Same with my kids. You go out in the morning and take that nice first breath? Not in my neighborhood. As you go out in the morning, you hold your breath as you run to your car. Before I get home from work, I beg my wife to light candles before I get home. Otherwise, when I walk inside, it smells like someone blew up the house.” 

Several neighbors then touched on another subject: their overall impact of Hydrogen Sulfide on their health. While many said that were now being treated for allergies and frequent colds, Kim Stimeling said she and her husband’s oldest child, now four, suffers from cold-induced asthma, and their year-and-a-half year-old son was recently diagnosed with cancer.  

“Thankfully, the cancer was confirmed not to be environmentally related, but the fact that our minds went there, and in light of hearing other parents talking about their children’s health, should not even be a thought in our minds,” Stimeling said. “It is a very real concern and a scary realization that has sat with me for a year now.” 

While the residents of Landenberg Hunt said they continued to seek allies and answers, New Garden Township has already been at work to find them. Allaband told the audience that the township is in the second year of a study being conducted with Dr. Lorenzo Cena, associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences at West Chester University, that will measure Hydrogen Sulfide levels in the township, the results of which will be shared at a public meeting at a later date. 

“We need to do is to wait for the numbers from the state and wait for the numbers from the West Chester University study and do a comparison,” Allaband said at the meeting. “If we can combine it all and split the findings down the middle, it will give us a better snapshot of the problem, if there is a problem. I believe that if it’s identified that there is a problem, the state and the federal government will chip in and there will be grant funding available to do remediation and develop a corrective action plan.”  

‘This is about real problems’ 

Allaband said that solutions to greatly reduce Hydrogen Sulfide emissions from SMS is already underway throughout Europe and parts of Canada. A fully automated, maintenance friendly technology known as “scrubbing” -- containing a storage tank for outdoor installation, a gas scrubber, an air collection room and a chimney -- has been proven to clean the air effectively. 

If there has been one repetitive chorus shared at the two gatherings with the Landenberg Hunt community and at the town hall meeting on March 21, it is that their grievances have not been articulated as finger-pointing exercises pointed at a multi-billion-dollar industry. Rather, the tone of their voices has had everything to do with seeking answers and proactive solutions, that they said can only be achieved through the cooperation of the industry itself. 

“Does the answer to this problem -- where the threshold of how it can be solved seems to be very gray or blurry or unattainable -- have to be a reactive solution or can there be a proactive solution where we can work this out, and where both sides can be happy?” one neighbor asked. “This is about real problems – health issues, property values and corrosion. 

“We have to garner some kind of sympathy from the politicians and the community and the   environmental agencies who are out to do the right thing and make that public, so that these [mushroom growing facilities] want to be compliant and do the right thing.” 

The entire Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection report – and a summary -- can be found on the New Garden Township website, www.newgarden.org.  

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].