Likely source of Schaumburg-area stench identified

“What's that smell?” was the question on the minds of many Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates-area residents last weekend.

Numerous members of the Everything Schaumburg and Everything Hoffman Estates Facebook pages have posted various, colorful descriptions of awful odors wafting across the area in recent days. Some characterized the stench as worse than skunks, rotting garbage or flatulence.

Neither Schaumburg Village Manager Brian Townsend nor Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod had received any official explanation of the smells Monday, but both were sure they weren't caused by any projects the villages are conducting.

If there's any consensus among the social-media theories of mulch, rotting garbage, raw sewage and others, it's that manure is the likely cause.

And with the disclaimer that no one is 100 percent sure of what all the complainers were smelling, Cook County Forest Preserve District Communications Manager Staci Stagner confirmed Monday that a farmer who leases a field from the district in the Arthur L. Janura Forest Preserve west of Barrington Road did spread chicken manure as fertilizer last week.

The field the farmer uses is just south and east of the Poplar Creek Model Airplane Flying Field, which is just off Shoe Factory Road southwest of its intersection with Higgins Road.

While easy to understand the connection between this field and the location of complaints at the Bridges of Poplar Creek Golf Course in Hoffman Estates or the intersection of Bode Road and Knollwood Drive in Schaumburg, one complaint came from as far east as Conant High School on Plum Grove Road.

Stagner emphasized it's unclear what weather patterns might have been a factor or even if everyone was smelling the same thing. But the fertilizer used in the forest preserve field is organic and nontoxic, and it was used for the first time this year, she said.

Jim Sallenback, who's lived near Schaumburg High School for 21 years, said he could smell it at his house but that it was particularly strong when he visited a fast-food restaurant along Barrington Road.

“It smelled like vomit right there,” he said.

Though Sallenback has some agricultural experience, he's more familiar with the smells of cattle and pig farms than chicken farms. Even so, he questioned why a farmer would fertilize a field in the middle of summer.

He speculated the farmer was cleaning out a chicken coop and dumped the manure outside or that the crop was especially struggling this year.

Schaumburg police Sgt. Christy Lindhurst said the village's 311 center received at least a few inquiries about the smell last weekend. The police department was able to determine the manure as a possible cause with a few phone calls.

“There were no safety or health concerns that we were made aware of,” she said.