‘Rancid:’ Neighbors want a Meridian composting site run by a longtime farm family closed
For someone who’s seen Meridian boom in recent years, heading south on Locust Grove Road, near Kuna’s northern border, might feel a little bit like moving back in time.
Box stores, subdivisions and construction plots begin to give way to wet, rolling fields; traffic lights yield to four-way stops. There, in one of South Meridian’s shrinking agricultural hamlets, a local composting business and its neighbors are butting heads over the future of the site.
After years of tension over the site’s odors and operations, Timber Creek Recycling says it will decommission and move its operations to Nampa. President Mike Murgoitio says the move is “bittersweet” — his family has owned land around the site in South Meridian for generations.
But neighbors say they’re sick of foul odors coming from the site. They want residential development in and Timber Creek out.
Finding a ‘niche’ in the waste management system
The composting center is located west of Locust Grove Road and south of Lake Hazel Road on land that the Murgoitio family previously used as a dairy farm. The center has operated for about the past decade, receiving waste like leaves and construction materials and processing them into new products, mainly compost and cattle bedding.
Timber Creek believes its work is vital to keeping these materials out of landfills in the Treasure Valley.
“The more of that organic stuff (landfills) can divert in the beginning, it’s better for the environment,” Vice President Caleb Lakey told the Idaho Statesman. “It saves them a bunch of operational costs.”
“It’s great, you know, our niche in the whole waste process,” Lakey said. “We play a part of the whole waste management system in the Treasure Valley in big way.”
Lakey said any leaves collected in Meridian come to Timber Creek.
Timber Creek is known for its organic compost — with names like “Signature Blend” and “Timber Creek Gold” — which Lakey said has won environmental awards and stood out among competitors. The center also grinds construction wood into cattle bedding, which, combined with ground Sheetrock helps reduce certain health complications for cattle.
More controversially, Timber Creek has also accepted and crushed concrete. After neighbors voiced complaints about potentially harmful silica dust being released in the crushing, Timber Creek ceased accepting concrete on Oct. 31.
“We are still accepting it in Nampa,” Mike Murgoitio told the Statesman, referring to Timber Creek’s still-limited operations in Nampa, which will grow as the company eventually shifts all operations there. “We just don’t accept it here anymore, just to preserve the relationship with the neighbors and the city.”
Concerns over land use, ‘rancid’ smells
The dispute with neighbors stems not so much from the type of work Timber Creek is doing — most will point out they appreciate the environmental benefits of composting and recycling — but where it is being done.
When the land was annexed into the city in 2016, it was zoned for future residential development. Timber Creek agreed in 2019 that it would plan to be done with operations by 2029 or 30 days after a resident moved within 1,000 feet of the site, whichever came first.
Since then, neighbors have complained of “rancid” smells coming from the site, in particular from a product called waste-activated sludge, a byproduct of cheese production.
“The smell is not agricultural,” Troy Allen, who lives off of Locust Grove about a mile southwest of the composting center, told the Statesman. “It’s just really rancid, and when you smell it you smell it ... You don’t want to be outside having your barbecue, or have your friends over.”
Allen has lived in a few different houses in the neighborhood for almost 30 years and owns an alfalfa farm on his property.
Allen pointed out that according to Central District Health, the sludge is an industrial waste, which he attributes to the sludge’s distinctive, nonagricultural smell. Allen said the smell is unpredictable and is generally worst in the mornings and evenings.
“I would love to be able to use my backyard,” Brenda Blitman, another neighbor, told the City Council in a hearing Nov. 12 regarding Timber Creek’s timeline for decommissioning. “And not have to do the lottery to decide if today’s the day it’s going to smell bad. I’m afraid to even schedule things out.”
A regulatory gap
Adding to some neighbors’ concerns is a lack of clarity around who is responsible for responding to these complaints.
“Over the last many years, it just seems like a finger-pointing game every time somebody gets called,” Todd Edgar, who lives about a half mile from the center, told the Statesman by phone.
Edgar said he used to try complaining to city officials, Central District Health and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, but would get stuck in a loop of each agency telling him to call the other. “I kind of just quit calling,” Edgar said. “Nobody can do anything.”
Asked about the regulatory gap Timber Creek sits in among the city, Central District Health and the DEQ, Lakey emphasized that the sludge they accept is permitted and that the compost it produces is organic.
“Anything that comes off of a factory is considered industrial waste,” Lakey said. “That doesn’t classify it as, you know, not safe. It just classifies it as: It’s regulated.
“We sell and make organic compost here. We have no motive — and it would destroy our business — to accept anything that’s contaminated, because we would create horrible compost and our customers wouldn’t buy it.”
Lakey said the composing center doesn’t have “one overarching enforcement agency,” but “every odor complaint we’ve received, we have gone out, investigated, logged, sent that to the health department.”
After much back and forth at the Nov. 12 hearing over what constitutes a “violation,” the city attorney, Bill Nary, confirmed to the Statesman that Timber Creek had not been issued any formal violation by Central District Health for its odor. Still, a spokesperson from the health department said at the hearing that they had investigated odor complaints and found them to be “valid,” and that they had informed Timber Creek about their findings.
Neither Central District Health nor the DEQ indicated that the smell itself indicates anything hazardous, though a persistent odor issue could constitute a nuisance.
Nary also noted that the sludge is not prohibited under Timber Creek’s existing development agreement, which he says is “very broadly worded.”
Residential development creeps closer
Concerns about the smell and its impact on surrounding property have intensified as residential development has inched closer. With Brighton’s Pinnacle subdvision expanding nearby and Black Rock Homes planning a residential development that could cross the 1,000-feet threshold as early as spring 2025, it’s clear that Timber Creek will need to leave.
“We realize we’re not forward-compatible with what the city wants to do with this property,” Murgoitio said. “We understand that ... We’re just saying, let’s do it right.”
The question up for debate for the Meridian City Council is when and how the move will take place.
In the last public hearing Nov. 12, Timber Creek asked to modify its development agreement with the city by removing the 1,000-foot trigger condition and allowing the center to decommission by December 2027. Community members called for the council to deny this request in favor of an earlier end date, and for Timber Creek to stop accepting the sludge and concrete.
Elizabeth Koeckeritz, an attorney from Givens Pursley, testified on behalf of developer Black Rock Homes, which wants to continue to build toward the center without fear of an odorous nuisance for potential buyers. Koeckeritz declined the Statesman’s request for comment.
Murgoitio said decommissioning the site will take time. He said he can’t “pack up and leave overnight.” Compost activated and heated by microbes needs to cool down and stabilize or risk catching fire, he said. Materials need to get trucked to Nampa.
Lacy Ooi with Meridian Code Enforcement told the council that if Timber Creek left the site “with materials abandoned in different states of compost process, (it would) likely become a hazard.”
And while the new Nampa site started accepting compost in January, Timber Creek is still building it to full capacity. Murgoitio says when it’s done, aerated pads will be able to process compost in just 45 days. The Nampa site is also in an industrial area.
Neighbors say they don’t want the Meridian site to be unsafely abandoned, but they struggle to trust that Timber Creek is preparing to leave as quickly as it can.
“The neighbors don’t really have any trust in them on what they say,” Edgar told the Statesman.
Edgar said he would most like to see a strict timeline for shutting down and for the company to be “held accountable” to the agreement. “Make them have some skin in the game,” he said.
Deliberations to be continued
Council members deliberated on a timeline for decommissioning that could work for both Timber Creek and the surrounding community, while also tightening the reins on Timber Creek’s odor mitigation efforts and the list of materials it can accept.
Around 10:30 p.m., the council opted to continue to the hearing to Tuesday, Dec. 17, giving Timber Creek time to present a more detailed decommissioning plan, with benchmarks for how it will ramp down operations, as well as a draft modified development agreement with the compromise date of July 1, 2027, to cease all operations.
Murgoitio also agreed to stop accepting concrete.
Lakey said the company would work with the nearby cheese factory, which supplies the sludge, to apply lime to the material before it’s loaded onto trucks and delivered to Timber Creek. He says he believes the smell is worst when the sludge is being delivered, and that he hopes applying lime beforehand could cut down the smell significantly.
The draft modification will likely be available to the public in city records about a week before the hearing, Nary told the Statesman.
While this proposed date is later than spring 2025, it could offer some certainty for neighbors as well as the company about what the next three years will look like .
Lakey said clarity on the end date is important because “we employ close to 50 people here full-time” who are wondering, “Am I going to have a job?”
“We’d like to just say, ‘Hey, look, we know this is the end date. Here’s our transition plan. Here’s a spot for you,’” Lakey said.
The council plans to have the final word on Dec. 17.
Murgoitio said he understands it’s the right move for Timber Creek and for the city.
“I wish I could stay here and farm and do this the rest of my life,” Murgoitio said. “But, you know, we’ve had this ground for many years, and it’s time for somebody, many other families, to enjoy this land like we did.”
