Port Weller neighbourhood suffer through stench from waste treatment plant

Aging equipment is to blame for a pungent odour in a St. Catharines neighbourhood, that residents describe as “abnormal and unbearable.”

The Niagara region is apologizing to people who live in the area, saying there is no clear timeline for a fix, but they are working on it.

For the residents of Port Weller, sitting outside and enjoying the nice weather over the past few days has been…smelly.

Some people said things like, “it smells like a sewer backup”, “smells like grandpa’s old out house that what it does”, and “it stinks and we can’t sit in our backyard.”

The neighbourhood is located right next to the Port Weller Waste Water Treatment Plant, which the Niagara region says is having some equipment problems.

“This is the part of the system which actually puts air into the sewage and helps with the treatment,” said Phill Lambert, the director at Water and Wastewater Services for the Niagara Region. “What we’re experiencing right now is the failure of some of that equipment, and so it smells a little worse than it normally would.”

Lambert said the age of the equipment is to blame, as the treatment plant was originally built in the early ’70s.

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He said waste water is still being treated, and aside from discomfort due to the smell, there are no health and safety concerns and no raw sewage has been spilled.

He assures that new equipment is on the way.

“We’re receiving some as we speak, but it does take time,” said Lambert.

A very subtle odour can be smelled in the neighbourhood, coming from the treatment plant, but people in the area say that it’s not out of the ordinary for there to be a little bit of a smell some days.

However in the last few weeks, they say the smell has been abnormal.

“In the evening, as the Autumn weather is here, you’d like to leave your windows open, but you can’t even do that,” said one resident. “It almost smells like the north end of a dog heading south.”

The region says when it comes to fixing the problem, it’s not as simple as going to the store and buying new equipment.

They say they have to get it custom made, so right now they say they can’t provide a timeline on when exactly that equipment is going to come.

In the meantime, they are working on ways to reduce the odour.

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