mollybh on Mon, 19 Jul 2004 03:46:49 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> HERE IS SOME REAL BIOTERROR |
Buffalo News - A smelly nuisance GO TO BUFFALO.COM Wednesday, June 16, 2004 FOCUS: SEWER ODORS -A smelly nuisance As problems persist at the wastewater treatment plant on Squaw Island, downwind is a bad place to be By MICHAEL BEEBE NEWS STAFF REPORTER 6/15/2004 Buffalo's aging sewer plant has a digestion problem. A big problem. And a sour stomach in million-gallon sewage sludge digesters means a headache for those downwind of the city's wastewater treatment plant - the West Side, Black Rock and Riverside. There's no quick cure for an ailment that first hit the plant in January 2002, started giving off offensive odors last summer and winter, and won't be fully corrected until next spring at a cost of $4 million to $5 million. And despite the Buffalo Sewer Authority's spending $100,000 on deodorizers aimed at masking the smell, and insisting the worst of the odors are over, those downwind of the plant on Squaw Island say their noses tell them different. How bad and where it smells depends on which way the wind blows past the Niagara River plant. Most of the time, these odors settle like a foul blanket over the Black Rock business strip along Amherst and Grant streets. "It's like sitting next to a kid who needs to have his diaper changed," said Caleb Basiliko, a boatwright who lives behind his shop at 414 Amherst St. "It's terrible, it's pungent," said Howard Bookmiller, who owns Howie's Appliances down the street. "A backed-up toilet doesn't smell that bad." "It's eye-watering, it's irritating," said Robert Niemiec, who runs the family- owned lumberyard, Niemiec Builders Supply. Niemiec's has been across Grant Street from Buffalo State College since 1952. The smell also wafts over the campus. Adds North District Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr.: "It's a cross between an outhouse and algae on a river. It makes you wish the skunks would come out." And it's not just a smelly problem for a slice of Buffalo. Tens of thousands of motorists catch whiffs of the offensive odors on the Niagara Thruway as they pass the sewage plant. Many of those turning up their noses are tourists now that the Thruway has rerouted Canadian and Niagara Falls traffic through the Buffalo toll road. Officials at the Buffalo Sewer Authority say they are doing all they can to solve the odor problems and that they have them under control. They call it a balancing act to keep rates reasonable while running a plant first built in 1938 and modernized several times since. But they were met by an angry group of residents, business owners and politicians at a community meeting in late April. "It's very unfortunate that this problem got to a point where the odors were very offensive and disturbed the quality of life for a short period of time," Anthony Hazzan, general manager of the sewer authority, said in an interview last week. "However, we have an action plan, a business plan, put together. We're addressing it, we've identified funds, the odor problem is dissipating and we're correcting it." Niemiec, who is also president of the Grant Amherst Business Association, disagrees. It still smells at his business, he said. "I'm running a lumberyard, I'm outside all day," he said. "People ask me all the time: you got a sewer problem?" Hazzan admits he may have been overly optimistic when he told residents in April that the smells would end in four to six weeks. But he said the smell is lessening and the end is near. Those downwind of the plant aren't so sure. And they say their lack of economic clout has prolonged the problem. "If this were Amherst, it would have been taken care of already," said Golombek, the Common Council member. "But it's the West Side, Black Rock and Riverside." State Sen. Byron Brown, a Buffalo Democrat, called the community meeting with Golombek after he went to a meeting at the Polish Cadets hall on Grant at Amherst and was nearly bowled over by the stench. "People in the community are extremely unhappy about it," Brown said. "The odor over there is pretty foul. On a bad day, it's awful." Inspectors from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, at Brown's request, conducted air-monitoring tests. Inspectors say the odors were not a health risk but were a nuisance affecting the quality of life. The plant, which treats 140 million gallons of sewage a day, was built for a Buffalo population of 600,000 and can handle up to 500 million gallons. It easily handles the added daily load from suburban communities, officials said. "This whole place is like a filter," Plant Superintendent Salvatore LoTempio said on a tour of the plant last week. "You have dirty water coming in, clean water coming out." LoTempio said the bad odors are from digesters used to break down sewage sludge, a byproduct. There are six of these concrete tanks, ranging in size from 1.4 million gallons to 1.9 million gallons. Bacteria in the sludge break it down, it is sent to a dewatering station, and then burned in the plant's three incinerators. The wooden roofs on two of these digesters started falling apart from age - some date to the 1930s, others from the 1950s - and the tanks were taken out of service in January and March of 2002, LoTempio said. The plant's other four digesters started developing problems because of the increased loads. Sludge started foaming over the roofs, developing strong-smelling acids, and the resulting stench started drifting over the Niagara Thruway into the city. One of the digesters was foaming during last week's tour, and plant workers were using fire hoses to break down the foam and force it back in the tank. This digester had been rehabbed and plant workers were trying to get the bacteria working again. Despite the deodorizers, the digester was giving off a terrible odor that could be smelled in Black Rock. Hazzan, the sewer authority's general manager, said outside consultants URS discovered that besides the deteriorating roofs, the digesters' heat exchangers and pumps had to be reconditioned or replaced. That work is under way. Daniel R. David, the regional engineer for quality for the state DEC, said a lack of maintenance is probably to blame. "The city and the sewer authority are probably not in the best financial straits for a number of years and they've probably let maintenance go at times," he said. Three of six digesters are being repaired, and each one of those, once it is rehabbed, will have to go through the slow process of coming back on line. Each will probably smell until it does. e-mail: mbeebe@buffnews.com <... 60 lines of webpage cruft deleted @ nettime -- mod (tb)> FAQ | Help | Site Map | Subscribe to the News Copyright 1999 - 2004 - The Buffalo News ------------------------------------------------------------ This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net