MARYSVILLE — The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency will conduct a community meeting, on the start of an odor monitoring program in the Marysville and Everett area, from 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday, July 24, in the Allen Creek Elementary multi-purpose room, located at 6505 60th Dr. NE in Marysville.

Mike Davis, founder of Citizens for a Smell Free Snohomish County, has taken issue with the fact that the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is moving forward with another study of the odor that Marysville and Everett residents have reported smelling repeatedly over the course of the past few years.

“It is my belief that this is yet another strategy by Cedar Grove to try and wear us down and not deal with their odor issue,” said Davis, who criticized this study as unnecessary and contrary to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency’s own rules in choosing a contractor for the study. “They are using Odotech, a Canadian firm that is a current contractor of Cedar Grove, and that assisted Cedar Grove and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency to write the Request For Proposal that was used to determine a contractor.”

Davis cited public records requests conducted by the city of Marysville to support his claims that Cedar Grove Composting essentially wrote the RFP that was used to choose Odotech.

The city of Marysville recently made its own counterproposal to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and the Department of Ecology, which Davis praised as “truly independent,” while city of Marysville officials are encouraging concerned citizens, business leaders and elected officials to attend the July 24 meeting.

“We’re doing all we can to bring the meeting to the attention of the public, because we feel it is a topic that has generated great interest around our community,” said Doug Buell, public information officer for the city of Marysville.

For more information on the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency meeting, contact Gloria Hirashima by phone at 360-363-8000 or via email at ghirashima@marysvillewa.gov.

For more information on Citizens for a Smell Free Snohomish County, call Davis at 360-722-2647 or log onto http://freemarysville.blogspot.com.