According to an enforcement package agreed upon by Purina and the CDPHE, a state health inspector was at the Colorado State University Spur Campus, located across Interstate 70 from the Purina plant, last October and observed strong odors from the plant. The inspector eventually discovered that the odor that day was higher than CDPHE's limit, which states that a violation occurs if smelly air has been diluted with seven or more volumes of odor-free air and a smell is still detected.
According to the CDPHE's enforcement package, signed on July 15 by a Purina plant manager, the odor on that day in October remained when flushed out with up to sixteen volumes of odor-free air.
Purina has agreed to comply with regulations regarding odor emissions and an Odor Control Plan from Denver's local health department, according to the enforcement package. The company will also pay a $7,000 penalty, with 80 percent of the money going to the state’s Community Impact Cash Fund, which provides grants and funding for environmental justice work in the state. The other 20 percent will go to Colorado’s general state fund.
Along with state air-quality regulations, the 2023 odor broke a previous consent order between the CDPHE and Purina in 2022. That order stemmed from instances of odor exceedance from the factory in 2021. Under it, Purina said it would comply with the city-approved Odor Control Plan, required for any pet food facility in Denver.
In 2021, the City of Denver fined Purina $12,000 for repeated emissions of noxious odors, but this penalty is the first time the CDPHE has fined the facility.
“According to state statutes, we cannot assess a penalty for a facility’s first odor violation,” explains Zachary Aedo, a communications and marketing specialist with the CDPHE's Air Pollution Control Division. “However, the most recent 2024 enforcement package was the second violation of state regulations.”
Aedo says penalty amounts are determined based on compliance history, the duration of violations and the impact on public health.
Lawsuit Against the Purina Plant
Some residents near the notoriously smelly factory believe it’s high time Purina’s impact on their health is addressed. A group of residents filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in May alleging noxious fumes from the pet food plant are so bad that people who live nearby should be compensated for their loss of property value and quality of life.Robert Fields and Lorena Ortiz, two Denver residents who live within a mile of the facility at 4555 York Street, are the representatives who filed the suit; attorneys on the case estimate over 2,000 additional plaintiffs could eventually join.
The complaint claims that poor maintenance on Purina’s behalf has led to the horrifying smells.
“A properly designed, operated, and maintained pet food manufacturing facility will adequately capture, remove, and dispose excess noxious emissions and will not emit noxious odors into the ambient air as fugitive emissions,” the lawsuit contends. “Defendant negligently and knowingly failed to properly design, operate, repair, and/or maintain the facility and its associated operations, thereby causing the invasion of Plaintiffs' property by noxious odors on unusually frequent, intermittent and ongoing reoccurring occasions.”
The lawsuit asks for compensation for damages related to the odor.
Purina has operated the Denver factory since 1930, but back then the plant was primarily used to produce feed for livestock. According to a Nestlé website, the plant transitioned to making only pet food in 1972. Purina's website boasts that the Denver facility is the first pet food factory to use solar panels, and it gets over 80 percent of the energy it uses from renewable sources.
The pet food giant has over 350 employees at the Denver plant, which sits near the Elyria-Swansea and Globeville neighborhoods. That area has long been identified as one of the most polluted in the country, and Purina reportedly led Denver’s list of smell complaints in 2023.
“Purina is a proud member of the Denver community,” the company said in a statement at the time of the lawsuit. “We have remained committed to being the best neighbor we can be, and that won’t change. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the specifics of pending litigation.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Liddle Sheets Coulson, a Detroit-based class-action firm, and Fuicelli & Lee, a Denver personal-injury firm. Laura Sheets of the Detroit firm says there will be a scheduling conference in the coming weeks to create a road map on deadlines for the case.
“That conference will also kick off the discovery period, where both sides get to request information from the other,” Sheets says. “This will take several months, and after that, the first phase of the case will conclude with the filing of the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Class Certification.”
