PHARSALIA – Five years worth of complaints from residents of Preston and Plymouth about a putrid smell coming from the Pharsalia Landfill has prompted a legal investigation into a benefits package that compensates Pharsalia only.

Chenango County Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox, R-Oxford, directed the county’s attorney to look at the possibility of renegotiating the package to include the other towns that are impacted.

The move isn’t sitting well with Pharsalia Supervisor Dennis Brown, who is also the committee’s vice chairman.

“I understand the frustration that the other towns feel. Don’t think we don’t smell it, too,” he said.

In a deal made back in 1996, for the life expectancy of the landfill, Pharsalia receives $4 per ton of garbage taken in, or about $93,000 annually. Brown said the income has offset the town’s highway maintenance expenses and helped afford roadside clean-up.

A number of remedies at the landfill have attempted to control gases that escape, including capping, venting and flaring. Chenango County Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon has said that a lot of the smell is escaping from the sludges the landfill takes in.

At a meeting of the Public Works Committee last month, Preston Supervisor Peter Flanagan shared an article about a landfill near Pittsburgh that was sued for about $600,000 due to unresolved odor complaints. He said Plymouth Supervisor Jerry Kreiner had given him the article to present at the meeting.