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New Jersey Neighborhood Raises A Stink Over Nauseating Stench

JACKSON, NJ(CBSNewYork) -- A neighborhood in New Jersey, is fighting a landscaping company over stinky mulch.

As CBS2's Meg Baker reported, a heap of mulch and topsoil is nauseating neighbors in Jackson.

"This large overwhelming stench of things decomposing, it just permeated the air," Maggie Quinn said.

The stench comes from JR Landscaping. Neighbors contend that the company violates land use rules.

Quinn and her family moved into their home in 2009. Beyond the large fence in their backyard was a 19-acre horse farm.

"The horse farm that was once there then turned into a processing and manufacturing facility," Quinn said.

Now, she says they are battling not only noxious smells of decomposition, but noisy truck traffic dumping and picking up mulch and soil.

"You couldn't enjoy your backyard. It became a quality of life issue. The odor, the trucks coming in and out at all hours of the day, the machinery, the trucks dumping, not what we expected at all," Quinn said.

Neighbors have been battling the issue since 2011.

For a while, the facility was shut down by the Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP said the site failed to get a permit to dispose of or store solid waste.

"He's been doing a lot of things he isn't supposed to," Debi Abela said, "There are dump trucks, beeping trucks backing up, a lot of noise at 3, 4 in the morning."

Owner James Picon's business spans two properties close to the neighborhood. He refused to comment to us on the situation.

In a statement, the Jackson Zoning Board's lawyer said the township is now trying to determine if the 'right to farm stature' allows the landscaping company to produce mulch and top soil.

The Quinn family and her neighbors will appear before the zoning board January 21, to testify. They will be represented by the township's lawyer. The big hulk of mulch is now costing the taxpayers money.

Manufacturing at the property was shut down in 2011 for operating a recycling facility in a residential zoned area of the town.

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