‘Eastside funk’ detection project expanding in Des Moines

DES MOINES, Iowa — Almost a year ago, the City of Des Moines contracted with a company called Envirosuite and installed odor monitors around three plants on the east side of the city.

Now the city looks to expand the $200,000 project, signing a one-year extension of the contract worth $100,000, adding 10 new monitors around the city. Those that live in the area are very familiar with the smell, coining it as the ‘eastside funk’. It is something people have gotten used to and some residents nowadays hardly notice it.

“When friends come to visit us there is complaints about the smell. But I don’t smell it here, I’ve lived here for a long time,” said Arturo Silva, from Des Moines who has lived in the area for 21 years. “It smells like a sewer, kinda. But I don’t know where it came from.”

Five of the new detectors will be added around the city’s wastewater treatment facility. The other five will be placed around areas where complaints have been frequent.

“I’m mostly excited about the insights that we will gain from more data,” said Dalton Jacobus, the Neighborhood Inspections Administrator for the City of Des Moines. “So more monitors will help us do that, more time will help us do that.”

There isn’t a solution yet to the smell, which residents tell WHO 13 News that it seems more prevalent in the warmer months. But with the expansion of the monitor network, the hope is a solution will become more clear. The city posts the findings monthly from the odor detectors, but a final review of the first year of data is coming in November 2024.

“We’re receiving complaints through our hotline and through the online report,” said Jacobus. “So the reports or the complaints we are getting are a key part of the data. We’re correlating the complain time, date, weather conditions with the readings that we’re getting from our monitors.”

Jacobus encourages people to use the reporting system by going to dsm.city/odor or call 515-248-6367 to fill out a complaint form. The five monitors will be installed around the Des Moines wastewater facility by the end of this month.

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