West Stockbridge — Following an October meeting that drew the ire of local residents concerned with “skunk-like” smells emanating from Wiseacre Farm, a cannabis cultivation facility, its West Stockbridge proprietor Jon Piasecki and business partner David Jadow employed a professional company to design a “state-of-the-art technology” odor-mitigation system that the business contends will manage their neighbors’ concerns.
On January 29, Piasecki submitted Wiseacre’s annual report for 2023, its first year of operations, to the West Stockbridge Select Board for their review. Here is a link to that document: Wiseacre Farm Annual Report for 2023.
“Our smell is real,” Piasecki said. “The odor impact on the people who are saying that there is an odor—it is—it’s true. There’s an impact from our odor on them.”
That odor and the ensuing complaints were what drove Piasecki, a landscape architect, back to the drawing board. Although he said his farm’s design—with a pricey sunken, bowl-like field, clematis plantings, tree additions, and natural buffers—was created around odor-mitigation strategies to keep those negative smells from escaping, the odors that ensued from the farm surprised even Piasecki. “We didn’t know the intensity that it would be,” he said.
Located at 42 Baker Street in the town’s marijuana overlay district and within a manufacturing zone, Wiseacre is classified by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission as a Tier 11 facility, meaning the entire canopy the business will cultivate is between 90,000 and 100,000 square feet. Its cultivation is outdoors. As with other Massachusetts cannabis growers, Wiseacre is governed by a Host Community Agreement (HCA); that is, a document executed by town officials and the business’s owners detailing how the business’s operations will be conducted, including the report provided on January 29.
Wiseacre’s HCA with the West Stockbridge Select Board includes an acknowledgment that the project will produce odors. “I am not required to eliminate it, but I am required to mitigate it,” Piasecki said of the odors.
Using recommendations promulgated by hired consultants, odor-mitigation engineering firm Byers Scientific, Wiseacre will employ a custom liquid-based atomization, or fine misting, odor control system that will use a natural substance to make droplets aimed at neutralizing the skunk-like smell and blow those droplets to the odorous area using an industrial agricultural five-blade fan, Piasecki said. According to the report, Byers will conduct air sampling and testing, in addition to monitoring via a weather station installed on site, to aid in ensuring those droplets are sent to the needed area. Piasecki said he will establish a WhatsApp private messaging site for residents to inform him as to where those odors are in real time, making adjustments to the system to concentrate the atomization in the problem area.
“Essentially, this approach will let us move potentially odorous air from the canopy directly into the path of the atomization system where any odor compounds would come into contact with, and be neutralized by, the enzyme-based odor neutralizer,” the report states.
Additionally, for the coming year, Piasecki’s report shows that he plans to add an air impedance fence to the one remaining open area of the farm that points toward the home of a family who previously voiced concerns over the odor, as well as plant additional fall-blooming clematis. The odors are only an issue during the time the cannabis flower is blooming, from mid-August through October, with the atomization system and other improvements set to be in place before the bloom period begins, Piasecki said. The document lists plans for 2025 that include further study and recommendations by Byers, with possible adjustments made to the odor control system in place this year.
Piasecki highlighted Wiseacre’s recent achievements including navigating state and local regulations to become operational; remitting a required three percent Community Impact Fee to West Stockbridge, with that sum set to increase from a $3,554 payment for 2023 to more than $90,000 for 2024 based on preliminary assessments; adding to the town real estate tax base by developing the property from its original vacant land; creating 39 local jobs, with 10 of those jobs taken by West Stockbridge residents; and, per its HCA, donating $10,000 to the West Stockbridge Zucchini Festival.
Wiseacre’s accomplishments were echoed by residents Curt Wilton, Wayne Cooper, William Kie, and Maya Copeland during the Citizen Speak portion of the meeting, a segment that occurred at the beginning of the meeting. “Wiseacre Farm has fulfilled their obligation to the town,” Wilton said of the licensing and permitting processes the entity achieved in 2023. Wilton, who doesn’t abut Wiseacre, advocated for “a compromise” between Wiseacre, the town, and neighbors.
As marijuana farms are now legal, Cooper said to “keep it growing” and cited other negative smells he reacts to at his home, including No. Six Depot’s coffee bean roasting. “So what’s the difference,” he asked.
With the odor not permeating year-round, Kie said cannabis growing is a farming operation and shouldn’t be singled out from other agricultural endeavors.
Copeland applauded the revenue Wiseacre brings to West Stockbridge in addition “to touch[ing] so many people’s lives in what Jon is doing on the medical level,” she said, referring to the benefits of medical marijuana. “And, there are plenty of other smells for people to complain about,” she said.
In response to questioning by Select Board member Andrew Potter, Piasecki said all of his employees receive the same salary, at $25 per hour, with performance-based bonuses possible. He said most of his workers are women and that personnel include employees from various countries.
Member Andrew Knouss asked if a dry atomization product could be used, with Piasecki responding that only a liquid enzyme will work on the skunk-like odor.
With Keresey questioning why the protocols listed in the report were prioritized for action, Piasecki agreed to offer an informal meeting for the Select Board and affected residents with Byers, upon their representatives’ consent. He said he recently held a meeting with eight residents where he unveiled these plans and offered to hold additional sessions with interested or affected citizens.
However, the presentation fell short for Richmond and West Stockbridge residents who questioned the safety of Byers’ atomization system and asked the Select Board to allow comments following the report’s production.
Joanne Yurman, who lives on Baker Street, asked the dais if the community will have a forum to react to Wiseacre’s report or whether a reaction time will be provided later in the evening. Richmond Select Board Chair Neal Pilson, who first brought the odor issue to the West Stockbridge Select Board’s attention on October 2, similarly pushed for a public comment period following Piasecki’s “highly important and somewhat controversial plan” presentation, but that request was denied. He said he attended the West Stockbridge Select Board meeting in support of Richmond residents.
Chair Kathleen Keresey responded that Citizen Speak is not a question-and-answer session. “We just received this document,” Keresey said. “It hasn’t gone out to the public, and I think that there are opportunities for the public to speak to it at some way when we convene our boards.”
Pilson said he hoped for comments from the public on the plan at the meeting.
“We are just in receipt of a 77-page document,” Keresey said. “I don’t feel like I’ve properly digested this document.”
After more than two decades in the Berkshires, Dean Hill Road resident Jane Mayer said the once “true retreat” for her Richmond family doesn’t exist anymore. “Now, after 22 years of living here, we don’t have the option of fresh air any longer, because the air emanating from Wiseacre Farm is polluted and compromised by a foul, noxious, uncontrollable odor in the summer and into the fall months,” she said.
Mayer implored the Select Board to reject Piasecki’s 2024 odor-mitigation plan, fearing the nature of the enzymes sprayed into the air. “Residents of West Stockbridge and Richmond demand a plan with conclusive evidence from a reputable third-party odor-mitigation firm that [the plan] is 100 percent safe for people and the environment,” she said. “And that it actually works to achieve its objective. The plan should not further pollute our air, our health, and our environment. My family and our collective communities deserve fresh air.”
Tom Ruffing is one of five Principal members who formed Neighbors Advocating for Fresh Air (NAFA) in October, an ad hoc group that now counts around 25 members between Richmond and West Stockbridge. A resident of Dean Hill Road in Richmond, he attended the recent West Stockbridge Select Board meeting. “The group is very concerned about the safety of any proposed compounds that are put into the air,” Ruffing said to The Berkshire Edge after the presentation. “The $64,000 question is, ‘when can we get Byers here to explain to us laypeople the science behind this and how their technology is proven to work against the odors and is proven to be safe.’”
In an email, he clarified that NAFA is “eager to hear from Byers Scientific as to the efficacy of odor control and specifically assurances of the safety of the proposed enzymes to be sprayed” and looks forward to a third-party engineering review.
Following the meeting, Piasecki forwarded a Safety Data Sheet prepared by Byers Scientific Engineering Group regarding the product referred to in Wiseacre’s report, Enymatic OC. He said the document is a chemical analysis of the compound that provides a safety rating for the substance “that lets you evaluate is this safe to have around or is this dangerous.” That document is included here.
