Tacoma leaders have a golden opportunity: Retire the Aroma. Ban animal rendering | Opinion

Retire the Tacoma Aroma

For the better part of a century, the Tacoma Aroma has cast an embarrassing stigma on our city. While sources of the infamous reek have been many, one of the worst offenders has been animal rendering — contributing the “rotting carcass” element to our distinctive perfume.

Now, Tacoma’s last rendering plant, operated by a large corporation, Darling International, wants to extend its lease with the Port of Tacoma. The company hopes to restart its stinky business after its rendering facility caught fire in 2022.

City and Port of Tacoma leaders leaders, this is your moment.

The universe has handed you a career-defining opportunity on a silver platter: the ability to redefine Tacoma as a vibrant, first-class metropolitan center.

Say it with us, city leadership: “Tacoma residents have suffered long enough! No more Tacoma Aroma!”

To rid our city of rendering plants, here’s what needs to happen:

Port of Tacoma Commissioners should decline a lease extension with Darling Ingredients Inc.

The Tacoma City Council should place an immediate moratorium on rendering plants.

The Tacoma Planning Commission should support a land use code amendment filed by the Eastside Neighborhood Advisory Council that would prohibit rendering plants from operating anywhere in the city.

Time is of the essence, as lease negotiations between the Port of Tacoma and Darling are expected to wrap up in the coming months. Since leases typically span decades, our elected leaders must take action now to save future generations from having to deal with a putrid-smelling city.

Arguably, the Tacoma Aroma has negatively impacted the quality of Tacoma’s neighborhoods and commerce. Property values and employment opportunities have lagged behind other Puget Sound cities. We have been unable to retain a single large private employer. The last one, Russell Investments, left town 15 years ago.

Tacoma needs to clean up its act if we want to attract jobs that pay a livable wage.

People want to live and work in a place that is visually attractive — and doesn’t stink.

Morgan Alexander, Tacoma

Stop virtue signaling

I was dismayed to see Tacoma City Council member Catherine Ushka continue to denigrate Tacoma’s beleaguered police department in a statement she issued in response to Chief Avery Moore’s decision to clear three Tacoma police officers recently acquitted in the death of Manuel Ellis.

Ellis had a criminal record. On the night of March 3, 2020, he had methamphetamine in his system. At trial, a jury found the officers not guilty. TPD found no misconduct, apart from the use of profanity.

Given the above, I’m compelled to ask why Ushka and her council peers, Kiara Daniels and Jamika Scott, continue to impugn the acquitted officers and the police department? Why do they imply the verdict was unjust? Why do they continue to insert race into the issue?

It’s bizarre to read that Ushka felt frustrated by “not being able to speak on or to even know what was happening,” and her desire to “reach out to people” even before we knew the facts and long before a trial.

To normal folks, such an injunction makes perfect sense: One doesn’t opine when one is oblivious to the facts.

As an elected official, such a rule no doubt strikes Ushka as quaint, but it is what it is.

Ushka and her peers should focus more on public works and infrastructure and less on virtue signaling.

After all, they work for all of Tacoma, not just the activists.

Greg Taylor, Tacoma