The stink from the north county sewer plant has been reported from up to eight miles away, and recently caused some local business people to send employees home early.

Debbie Lauret, director of the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, and Heber Thompson, mayor of American Fork, toured the plant on Wednesday after receiving numerous complaints about the smell within the past two months.

"We've had an abnormally high amount of complaints from various businesses saying you've got to stop the stink," Lauret told sewer plant managers. "I've smelled it myself."

One company sent workers home who became ill from the smell, while another company said they were afraid to bring visitors from Japan to their business because of the odor, she said.

"I've had people from as far as Cedar Hills saying they get it up there," she said. "We want to be able to respond by saying how we are working on it."

The plant processes sewage from 190,000 people living in American Fork, Pleasant Grove, Lehi, Alpine, Highland, Cedar Hills, Saratoga Springs, parts of Eagle Mountain and Draper, and has recently added Vineyard as its newest customer, said sewer district manager Garland Mayne.

And yes, there are odors, the worst of which come from the open fields where the solid waste, as it's euphemistically called, is laid out to dry before composting.

Drying in open fields has saved residents millions of dollars in processing costs since the plant opened in 1978, Mayne said, but is clearly no longer feasible as businesses and homes get ever closer. Beginning next week, the solid waste will be wrung to a clay-like consistency in a new machine, turned into so-called cakes, and then hauled to a landfill for disposal.

That would immediately begin to reduce the stink, except for the fields of drying waste that must still be processed over the next few months. Once those fields are clean, there will be a "significant and sustained reduction" of the smell beginning in late summer or fall, said sewer officials.

The machines used to wring water from the waste so it can be turned into cakes are part of a $1.8 million interim upgrade. An $80 million expansion and upgrade will add two more of the machines and double the capacity of the sewer plant to handle 30 million gallons of sewage a day when it is completed in two and a half years, Mayne said.

Both Lauret and Thompson said they were pleased with the tour and would be better able to explain to complaining residents and business owners what is being done to stop the stink.