Finally winning battle against east end stench?

Residents in the city's east end take note, the unpleasant smell emanating from the East End Water Pollution Control plant should soon be a scent of the past.

Catherine Taddo, land development and environmental engineer for the city, said the bad odor has already started to dissipate now that the new biofilter is up and running.

"The biofilter is currently working and the fans are bringing air up the stacks," said Taddo.

"There should be a significant improvement in the smell of the area. In the coming weeks there will be additional improvements as the biofilter establishes itself and ultimately reaches the project design efficiency."

The original projected schedule was eight to 10 weeks, but Taddo said some difficulty bringing inorganic media to the site - which was of no fault to workers there - caused them to fall one week behind schedule.

Inorganic media is expected to increase effectiveness of the biofilter - which is guaranteed by the manufacturer to last 10 years.

The previous organic biofilter media system, which only lasted five years, was nearing the end of its usable life.

Avery Construction has been performing work on the biofilter project, including enhancing the humidification and irrigation of the biofilter.

Biofiltration is a pollution control technique using living material to capture and biologically degrade process pollutants.

"There has been a bad odor coming from that structure for over six years now," said Steve Butland, Ward 1 councillor. "I think we're hopefully coming to the end of that."

"I realize staff moved quickly on this, but I hope everybody understands asking citizens from the east end of town to live with
that kind of odor is a tall order," added Paul Christian, Ward 1 councillor.

Christian said he understands it had to be done and wanted to articulate how much of lifestyle altering event it was for those in
the area.

"We have a very short summer season," said Christian. "I've been in the area and you can not sit outside and feel comfortable. On the behalf of those affected residents, I hope we can start to see some improvement in the quality of the smell in that area."

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