What’s that smell? Twin Cities suburbs adopt odor ordinances before cannabis retail market launches

Its smell is unmistakable — piney and sometimes faintly foul, with an acrid or spicy kick. Its pungency is polarizing: depending on who you ask, the scent of cannabis is enjoyable, tolerable or plainly repulsive.

And as Twin Cities suburbs gear up for the launch of Minnesota’s recreational marijuana market, some local officials are establishing rules around noxious scents.

City councils in Hastings, Cottage Grove and Stillwater approved odor ordinances last week, barring property owners from emitting smells deemed “offensive” and requiring them to mitigate problems with city officials’ help.

The city councils adopted the regulations alongside a slate of guidelines specific to cannabis businesses — from the distance that must separate certain establishments from schools and parks to the process through which they must register with municipalities.

Officials say the odor ordinances pertain to all residents and enterprises, not just those in the marijuana industry.

“It can apply to any stinky business,” said attorney Kori Land, who represents the three cities that put smell rules on the books.

(Sign up for Nuggets, our free weekly email newsletter about legal cannabis in Minnesota.)

The odor ordinances illustrate a challenge facing officials in some suburbs: how to embrace the nascent industry’s economic benefits while heading off concerns from residents that the marijuana market could degrade their quality of life.

Land said it was her idea to propose the smell guidelines in Hastings, Cottage Grove and Stillwater. It’s not the first time she’s dealt with odoriferous legal issues.

She helped South St. Paul craft an odor ordinance as the city tried to tamp down a stench many residents found rancid: the smell wafting from a plant that turns animal byproducts into other materials. Sanimax, the company that owns the facility, recently lost a legal challenge to the rule — signaling to Land it was strong enough to replicate in other cities.

“I feel like it’s a good model,” she said.

The three cities’ odor guidelines are broadly similar. Here’s how Hastings’ version works:

People who object to scents can lodge complaints with the city, though the ordinance only regulates “malodorous” smells, Council Member Jen Fox said. Complaints could initiate odor testing, with cities possibly turning to a portable, conical device to scientifically measure smell: the Nasal Ranger.

Developed by a Stillwater-based company and reminiscent of the Smell-o-Scope featured in the animated show “Futurama,” the telescope-like Nasal Ranger detects the concentration of foul-smelling particles in the air to determine an odor’s intensity.

The full package — the device, plus certification training — costs about $10,000, Land said. Fox said the tool isn’t in Hastings’ recently approved budget. Cottage Grove City Administrator Jennifer Levitt said the city is considering buying one. A Stillwater official didn’t reply to an interview request about the city’s odor rules.

In Hastings, a facility that racks up seven “verifiable” odor complaints over six months would be deemed a “significant odor generator.” City officials will then work with that establishment to manage the problem. If it persists, repeat violators could be fined $10,000, Land said.

Not everyone, however, finds cannabis’ smell offensive.

“A malodor is something that’s kind of in the eye of the beholder,” said Kurtis Hanna, a public policy and government relations specialist with Blunt Strategies, a Minneapolis-based consulting group that advocates for the cannabis industry.

“In my humble opinion, the smell of cannabis is actually wonderful.”

Hanna said he supports the cannabis industry taking reasonable steps to mitigate smell. But he said the odor ordinances “only [get] one side of the story” by relying on complaints about unpleasant scents.

Cannabis companies, Hanna said, might challenge the rules in court: “There’s probably going to be litigation on what is a good smell and a bad smell.”

Some cannabis businesses are more likely to run afoul of odor ordinances. A cultivation facility — only permitted in industrial and agricultural areas in Hastings under recently approved zoning rules — is more likely to generate a distinctive stench than a dispensary, Fox said.

In Cottage Grove, officials have successfully worked with a medical marijuana production company to regulate scent, said Levitt, the city administrator. LeafLine Labs, which recently changed hands, installed air purifying equipment to minimize odor when it opened in the city about a decade ago.

The company also provides monthly reports of Nasal Ranger readings along its property’s perimeter, Levitt said.

“They’ve always been a great corporate citizen,” she said.

Establishments outside the cannabis industry could also rack up smell complaints — a feature of the Hastings ordinance that raised questions for resident Teea Orner:

Will people complain about the cow manure that farmers use to fertilize their fields? Will they raise alarms about the hatching of mayflies along the Mississippi River, a birth of enormous and sometimes stinky proportions? What about the river itself, occasionally pungent when barges pass through?

“How do you stop all that?” asked Orner, who with her husband, Ken, owns Vintage Inspirations, an antique shop in downtown Hastings.

Fox, the council member, said she considers manure involved in farming a “malodorous” smell. But she said she doubts anyone would complain about the scent of something that’s “part of our culture.”

The odor ordinances could be put to the test when cannabis retail shops open, as soon as next year. Land, the city attorney, said several businesses, including two tobacco stores, have already applied for conditional use permits to sell certain cannabis products in Hastings.

And she added that as the process unfolds, city officials could opt to modify the rules.

“That’s the nice thing about ordinances,” Land said. “It is the law until they decide to change their mind.”