Waste Management is spending $12 million on a treatment plant that gets rid of the hydrogen sulfide at the landfill. Cue said the company assumed it could install a system similar to one in Florida that cost $5 million, but that wasn't the case.

The new permanent system will be used for the next 17 years of the landfill's life expectancy, Cue said. Pipes underneath the landfill cells draw out the gases, then run them into towers. That's where millions of odor-eating microbes, known as thiobacillus, do their work.

Cue calls them "union bugs." They occur naturally in soil and will be happy as long as certain pH, pressure and temperature conditions are met, according to a report by CDM Smith, environmental consultants in Massachusetts.

Based on the amount of hydrogen sulfide at the landfill, the bugs should have plenty to eat.

"We hope they turn into nice fat bugs," said Stuart Manuel, a manager at the treatment plant, "just like our Thanksgiving turkeys."

Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com