Milpitas Orders Newby Island Landfill to Deploy Drones, Monitors

Local authorities in Milpitas, California, have ordered the operators of the 342-acre Newby Island landfill to use drones and install chemical monitors to systematically track and measure the compounds responsible for the site's odors, according to a BBC News report published Oct. 16, 2026. The order also requires the landfill to automate the collection of landfill gases blamed for the smells, the report said.

The operators of Newby Island said they are committed to operating the site safely and protecting air quality, according to the BBC report. The outlet did not publish a direct quote from the operators.

What is the landfill being ordered to do?

The directive from local authorities covers three measures: deploying drones to survey the site, installing fixed monitors to measure odor-causing chemicals, and automating the collection of landfill gases that generate smells. The goal, according to the BBC, is continuous, data-driven tracking rather than periodic or complaint-driven inspection.

Why are residents pushing for this?

Chia-Ling Kong, an engineer who lives about half a mile from the landfill, has lived with the smell for years. "When I first moved here, I could not open my window for over 10 years," Kong told the BBC. She said conditions have improved recently but residents still contend with "two or three hours of bad smells a day." Kong is part of a citizen campaign against the odors and told the BBC she is optimistic continuous monitoring will help identify problems as they start, rather than after the fact.

How big is the odor problem, and who regulates it?

Milpitas is not an isolated case. The BBC reports that communities worldwide are raising complaints about smells from rubbish dumps, sewage treatment works and factories making daily life difficult. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate environmental odors as a pollutant, leaving states and local governments to handle complaints on a case-by-case basis, according to the report. Many countries have no formal regulations dictating how odors should be managed at all.

Urban sprawl is compounding the issue. Odor consultant Michael Bull told the BBC that housing developments are increasingly built near odor-generating industrial processes as land values rise and infill construction expands. Bull was describing conditions in the United Kingdom, but the BBC notes the pattern repeats in other parts of the world, driving demand for monitoring and mitigation technology.

What technologies exist to control industrial odors?

According to the BBC's reporting on odor-control technology, the main approaches fall into three categories: absorbing odors, converting them into less smelly compounds through chemical reaction, or burning them away. Experts cited in the report say the most effective systems can remove 90% or more of the target compounds responsible for a given smell when used correctly, but that performance comes at a cost that leads some operators to choose cheaper alternatives.

One common low-cost option is spraying large quantities of deodorizers to mask smells from landfills or sewage processing sites. Odor experts contacted by the BBC expressed doubt about how effective those large-scale masking sprays actually are at resolving the underlying problem rather than covering it up temporarily.

What to watch

• Whether Newby Island's drone surveys and fixed monitors produce public data that lets Milpitas residents and regulators pinpoint specific sources of odor in real time.
• Whether the automated landfill-gas collection system measurably reduces the "two or three hours of bad smells a day" that residents like Kong have reported.
• Whether other U.S. states or municipalities, absent federal odor regulation from the EPA, follow Milpitas's approach of mandating continuous monitoring rather than relying on complaint-driven enforcement.
• Whether landfill and industrial-site operators elsewhere shift from masking sprays toward the costlier absorption, chemical-conversion or incineration systems that experts say remove more of the odor-causing compounds.
• How the Newby Island landfill's operators respond publicly once monitoring data becomes available, given their statement to the BBC that they are committed to protecting air quality.

The push in Milpitas reflects a broader tension described in the BBC report: as land grows scarcer and more valuable, housing increasingly encroaches on industrial sites that were once kept at a distance, and residents are left negotiating with regulators and operators over how — and how fast — the smell gets fixed.