Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Workers started installing the final part of the cure for Sweet Home’s sewer odor woes on Monday, and city officials warn that the odor problem will probably flare up this week during the installation.
On Sunday, Temcor employees delivered the components of an aluminum dome that will cover the wastewater treatment plant’s sludge basin, which is the source of odor problems arising from the plant. Monday, they started constructing the frame for the dome on the ground near the basin.
The dome will replace a tarp being used as a temporary cover.
Starting Monday, plant workers shut down the new filter system, which biologically treats and removes odor from the air exhausted from the basin. They also shut down the blowers in the basin, which are used to mix the sludge before it is treated with lime and taken to a landfill.
“Basically, we’re anticipating smells coming back to some degree,” Public Works Director Mike Adams said. “All of our temporary fixes are temporarily off line until they get this on line.”
The dome will take three or four days to build, said Doug Atkinson, operations manager for OMI, Inc., which operates and maintains the city’s water and wastewater treatment plants.
At the end of the week, the city will bring in a crane from Forslund in Albany to set the dome on top of the basin, Atkinson said. After the dome is on, OMI will install permanent pipes from the basin to the filter, and Temcor will close up gaps and holes remaining in the dome.
OMI will turn the filter on again next week, Atkinson said. “Hopefully, the odor thing will be done.”
The city has had an odor problem for about a year and a half, since it replaced the mixing system in the sludge basin from mechanical arms with a blower aeration system in September 2006.
Initially, the city responded to the problem by covering the basin with a tarp. Recently, OMI constructed a filter, which blows air from the basin into a bed of gravel, bark chips and hog fuel.
The filter appears to be working now, Adams said. He expected the improvements to be immediate, but it turned out that for a week or two following the installation of the filter the odor problem continued. After that, the complaints to the Department of Environmental Quality dropped off.
“It should work wonderfully now,” Adams said.
It took some time for the biological component of the filter system to begin working, Atkinson said. “It took a couple of weeks to where I noticed I couldn’t smell it.”
For the past week or so, Adams said, he has been receiving indirect comments that things have changed.
Atkinson said the plant will still smell from time to time, cap or no cap.
“It’s not going to eliminate all the odors all the time just because of the product we work with,” he said.