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OTTAWA — Ottawa’s sewage-treatment plant has been especially smelly lately because its stench filters ran out of oomph a couple of weeks ago and can’t be replaced until the end of November, says the city official responsible for the plant.
“We weren’t aware that the odour-absorbers were at the end of their lifespan,” said Dixon Weir, the city’s general manager of environmental services.
The Robert O. Pickard Environmental Centre, on Green’s Creek by the Ottawa River in Gloucester, uses specialized granular activated-carbon filters to absorb foul smells from its screening and de-gritting facility. They need to be replaced every three to four years at a cost of roughly $400,000, Weir said; the only way to tell they’ve expired early is when the smell starts to mount.
And so it has, says Dan Ruddy, who lives in nearby Beacon Hill. “I have lived in the area for almost nine years and never has the smell been this bad,” he wrote in an email to The Citizen.
The city has monitoring equipment that detects hydrogen sulphide — a poisonous and flammable gas that gives unfiltered sewage its characteristic rotten-egg smell. “That isn’t the nature of the complaint here,” Weir said.
He said the city isn’t sure what is causing the current smell, but he suspects it’s something the human nose can detect more readily than any monitoring equipment could.
New filters are on order from Calgon, which manufactures them, but they won’t likely arrive before mid-November, Weir said. Installing them will take seven to 10 days, and Calgon experts will have familiarized themselves with the Pickard plant to make sure the process goes smoothly.
Between now and then, Weir said, Pickard staff are working on temporary measures to cut the odour, such as reducing the volume of sludge in its processors.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
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