‘You almost taste it’: Fredericton residents fed up with sewage plant odour

Some residents on Fredericton’s north side say a lingering smell from the city’s sewage treatment plant has become unbearable.

For people living near the plant on Barker Street, even spending time outside has been a challenge in recent months — especially when trucks hauling sludge pass by.

“You want to breathe through your nose. If you breathe through your mouth, you almost taste it. That’s how bad it is,” said resident Clyde Bungay.

The plant treats the city’s wastewater before it’s discharged and uses microorganisms to break down the waste, which produces biosolids.

Those leftover sewer solids are “dewatered” and eventually recycled into topsoil.

Marc Colwell, wastewater treatment supervisor with the City of Fredericton, says as the city’s population has grown, there has been “more flow into the plant.”

“Since I’ve started in 2019, our yearly total was around 4,500 tonnes (of biosolids). Now we’re around 6,000,” he said.

“It depends a lot on flows, how much rainfall we get, things like that.”

Colwell says the plant is putting in about 25 extra hours a week to keep up with demand, which may explain why people are noticing the smells more.

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“We were running that process starting at 5 in the morning and going until 10 at night. So we’re running the process when a lot of people are home from work,” he said.

“So they’re probably outside in the summer, noticing it a lot more.”

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Kripa Shankar Singh, a civil and chemical engineering professor at UNB, says the weather can also influence the odour.

“It also depends upon the atmospheric conditions, how the wind is blowing and everything, which will take away the smell and take to the residential area,” said Singh.

For now, the city is looking to use potassium permanganate, which is an oxidizer, to control odours. However, the chemical will take time to kick in.

However, Singh points out that chemical treatment can come with trade-offs.

“It is not always the preferred choice to use a lot of chemicals because that has other implications — cost, as well as some other implications in terms of reusing that sludge,” he said.

He adds that a strong smell alone doesn’t necessarily mean a health hazard — concentration and how often people are exposed are important factors as well.

“If it is a persistent smell, odour and it’s all the time and that compound is in very high concentration, which might be toxic, sometime then it is a concern,” he added.

The city says it tests the biosolids every three months as required by federal rules, and the results have consistently been within limits that are comparable to similar facilities across the province.

Global News asked the New Brunswick government about health thresholds, air monitoring and oversight, but did not receive a response before deadline.

For now, Colwell says the city is changing when “odour-heavy” work is done.

“What we’ve decided to do recently is move that process and start at midnight,” he said.

“So we’re going to work from midnight through the day to our normal end of day at 4 p.m.”