Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
City of Ottawa officials hoping to trumpet the overhaul of sewage equipment were confronted on Monday by New Edinburgh residents angry about the smell wafting up from beneath the manhole covers near their homes.
The city invited media to watch Ontario Environment Commissioner Gord Miller tour the site of newly-upgraded equipment meant to reduce sewage spills into the Ottawa River.
Miller is in town to conduct a review of the city’s sewage system problems.
But even before the event began, the air was pungent with the stench of raw sewage from the upgraded “regulator” under the intersection of Keefer Street and Rideau Lane.
One woman who lives on the corner of the quiet residential streets complained that the odour was so strong recently that she became lightheaded while gardening a few metres away from the manhole covers.
“It smelled like a sewage lagoon,” said Karen Woldike. “I physically brought up twice.”
She said she spoke to an electrician who came to service the equipment under the street, but had to abandon his work because of gases from the sewer system.
The Keefer Street regulator failed in 2006, leading to the discharge of nearly a billion litres of untreated sewage into the river. It is one of five undergoing a modernization the city says will eventually cut the discharge of sewage into the river by 65 per cent.
The city’s general manager of environmental services, Dixon Weir, showed Miller diagrams and photographs of the regulator put on display Monday afternoon. Along with Councillor Peter Hume, chairman of the planning and environment committee, they watched as a work crew pulled back the manhole cover so they could peer into the underground tunnel of the regulator, which channels sewage to an interceptor pipe to take it to the treatment facility.
Speaking with reporters, Weir at first denied he could smell any sewage.
“I don’t notice something right now,” Weir said. But as they wind shifted, he acknowledged the distinctive pong.
He said the city takes odour complaints seriously and would dispatch someone within 24 hours to check it out.
Stuart Mapp, whose front driveway was partially blocked by the press event, said he had to retreat inside after coming out on his deck for a cup of coffee earlier in the day.
“It was noxious,” he said.
The smells are not a rare occurrence, he said, and had he known about them two years ago, he wouldn’t have purchased the home.
Mapp’s elderly mother, who lives with him, called the smells “absolutely obnoxious.”
Hume said the complaints were the first he’d heard and promised the city would move to fix the problem quickly. He said it was possible the activated charcoal filters used to screen out odour had not yet been installed.
“I suspect they’ll be in place very quickly,” he said.
Miller said he had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with city officials Monday and will continue to meet with interested parties about the sewer upgrades today before delivering a progress update at a press conference — to be held indoors.