An unpleasant smell throughout the area on Tuesday led to complaints from many Cambria and Somerset County residents.
We are learning that the source of the recognizable smell came from miles away, as local farmers say it was indeed from manure.
The foul smell brought various first responders out looking for the origin of the stench late Tuesday afternoon.
Cambria County EMA coordinator Art Martynuska says the Department of Environmental Protection was contacted.
According to a DEP spokesperson, the agency has received several complaints and is investigating, but local farmers say they know where the smell came from.
They say a family pig farm in Somerset County was reportedly spreading manure.
“They were doing a normal agricultural practice of spreading their manure and incorporating it into the ground and preparing for the next crop. A good practice is that it was incorporated into the ground right away. That’s one way of trying to neutralize those odors,”
Hostetler adds that no violations occurred, and the farmer has been, and continues, working with conservation groups in Somerset County looking to avoid any situations like this.
So how exactly did the smell carry itself over five miles to the Johnstown area?
“As an industry, we cannot account for everything. Weather being one of the major factors in that,”
Our own meteorologist, Cait Westerholm, says the air moving around normally could be enough.
“We didn’t really see any strong wind gusts. Winds were generally less than about 10 to 15 miles per hour. Another thing that could have played a role in it was the heat, but we also didn’t see any really warm temperatures. We were pretty close to average, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s, so I don’t think anything weather related had a major impact on it, but just the air moving around us could’ve brought the smell to the area.”
She says what’s called an atmospheric inversion would normally be to blame, which would keep the smell lower in the atmosphere so the air could carry this distance, but there reportedly was not one on Tuesday.
While exactly how the smell spread is still to be determined, officials say there are other ways farmers are looking to avoid such incidents.
They say biodegradable additives being put on the manure or possibly building barriers are precautions some of the agricultural community is taking.
Officials add that the DEP is continuing to investigate the cause of the smell.