KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

With a hand held over her nose and mouth to try to filter out the stench, Vaughna Shank stands Friday with her husband, Mark, outside their home in the Cypress Court neighborhood of southern Botetourt County. "It smells like dead rats," Vaughna Shank said. "It's not even that bad right now. In the evenings, it is unbearable."

Photos by KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

This is the site that neighbors have said is the source of a horrible smell in Botetourt County. Lawrence Transportation Systems is building a 2-acre parking lot and allowed some of the debris from the former Mennell Milling facility in Roanoke to be brought in for fill.

Donna Smoot points to the origin of the smell that is distressing her and her neighbors, Mike and Vaughna Shank.

Donna Smoot said she called the Botetourt County Sheriff's Office in July because of a gagging stench she associated with "rotting flesh."

"I thought maybe there was a dead body or maybe a dead deer down by the railroad tracks," Smoot said Friday.

It soon emerged that the rancid odor assaulting her senses and those of her neighbors was the aroma of spoiling grain. The source of the stench turned out to be concrete, brick and other material, including an undetermined quantity of old grain, hauled from the demolition site of the former Mennel Milling flour and feed mill in Roanoke.

The material is being used for fill for a roughly 2-acre parking lot under construction at the nearby Lee Highway headquarters of Lawrence Transportation Systems, a company whose businesses include trucking, manufacturing and other operations.

Smoot said she and neighbors at Cypress Court, a small cluster of patio homes, had heard in late July, from a source she cannot now recall, that the smell would probably dissipate over the course of several days.

It hasn't.

Several residents said Friday that the stench can be unbearable.

Meanwhile, Chip Lawrence, chairman of Lawrence Transportation, said he never anticipated the fill would emit a noxious odor. The supplier is S.B. Cox Demolition Contractors, the Richmond-based company razing the milling facility on South Jefferson Street in Roanoke.

"It certainly was a surprise," Lawrence said. "I can do nothing more now than apologize for it. I ain't going to go over there and dig it up, I can tell you."

He said recent rains have intensified the odor.

"It was really bad over there [at Cypress Court] the first part of this week," Lawrence said. "I drove over there myself."

Glen Rippke, an agricultural specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, said the odor should lessen over time as the grain rots away. And Lawrence said the parking lot ought to be finished in two or three weeks. A layer of clay and gravel will cover the fill, he said.

For now, that's little comfort for Smoot and other residents of Cypress Court as summer's back yard-beckoning evenings fade away.

Rippke's description of the odor of rotting grain mirrored Smoot's.

"When protein begins to rot, it smells like dead animals all over the place," he said. "I wish it wasn't in a neighborhood. That's not a good idea."

Cypress Court is zoned residential. It offers a nice view of Tinker Mountain across Interstate 81. But the comparatively new neighborhood borders a wide sweep of land that is zoned industrial. Adjacent businesses include a storage unit complex, as well as Lawrence Transportation and Metalsa, a manufacturer of truck frames.

Smoot knew about the storage unit business, Lawrence Transportation and the manufacturer when she and her husband purchased their patio home nearly three years ago. But she said she was not aware then of just how many businesses were in the area.

Lawrence said he worried a few years ago when construction started for the residential development.

"It should never have been put there in the first place," he said. "I knew it was going to be a problem."

Rippke, from his office at Iowa State, emphasized that he had not seen the site and knew nothing definite about the fill material or the neighborhood's proximity to Lawrence Transportation.

But he said that, in the ideal world, clean fill would have been used. With grain in the mix, even in small quantities, the material likely should have gone elsewhere, he said.

"There is a reason we have landfills," Rippke said.

But landfill fees can be expensive for demolition companies.

Lawrence said he estimates that of the hundreds of truckloads of fill hauled to the site, only about one dump truck load's worth of grain would have been mixed in the debris.

Aziz Farahmand is a program manager for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The DEQ returned to the site Friday after hearing again from Cypress Court residents.

He said Lawrence Transportation was cleared to use the fill because it is "inert material" -- essentially brick, block and concrete, with only a small scattering of grain mixed in. The DEQ did instruct S.B. Cox and Lawrence Transportation to remove metals, including rebar, from the fill.

Farahmand said the DEQ is not concerned that the rotting grain will contaminate groundwater. He said he believes Lawrence Transportation has done a good job overall of handling the material.

The old flour mill complex is being demolished as part of ongoing redevelopment in the vicinity of South Jefferson Street and Reserve Avenue. Carilion Clinic owns the mill property, having purchased it last year from the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Mennel Milling has a new facility in Roanoke County.

A medical school is being built at Jefferson Street across from the demolition work.

On Friday, Todd Crocker, on-site project foreman for S.B. Cox, said additional fill material was hauled Thursday to Lawrence Transportation.

People have complained also about smells emanating from the demolition zone. Crocker said he barely notices the odor anymore, but he guessed that it worsens in wet weather -- speculation confirmed by Rippke. Moisture launches the rotting process, he said.

Rippke said the stench haunting Cypress Court residents ought to diminish "in several weeks."

"I know it will dissipate over time," he said. "In the meantime, it will make some people miserable."