CORNWALL, Ontario – Cornwall’s newest piece of infrastructure even has that new waste water treatment plant smell – and neighbours aren’t pleased.
Peter McArthur and a number of other residents in the Sunrise Acres neighbourhood in the east of Cornwall have smelled the stink of the plant for weeks – in some cases months.
McArthur walks his dog in the area immediately north of the plant and often smells the pungent odour of sewage…but things got worse recently when more neighbours began to smell the stench from their own properties.
“You can smell it, definitely,” said McArthur, who describes the stench as something akin to a wet or dying animal. “And when we walked by earlier this month you could smell it in the neighbourhood.”
McArthur was told by some neighbours there is a concern about property values now that the plant appears to be up and running at full capacity.
The city concedes there has been a smell factor in recent weeks.
“We have received complaints,” said John St. Marseille, Cornwall’s manager of infrastructure, who added part of the problem can be attributed to the growing pains of a new piece of municipal hardware: the treatment plant is not yet a year old.
“As we’re doing the rollout of the new plant…we add different (compounds) as we work on the settling of solids and other wastes.”
One of the new compounds comes with a pretty significant side-effect.
“It smells,” said St. Marseille. “I’ve gone into the area, and I can smell it.”
He added crews at the waste water treatment plant are likely to stay away from using that particular compound in the future.
But St. Marseille did say the city plans to continue to calibrate the plant in the weeks ahead to optimize efficiency.
