The city is taking steps to find the source of a smell that is making life miserable for some people living in southeast Calgary this summer.
Naqib Khanjan is an avid runner but these days, he said the smell in his neighbourhood is limiting the time he spends outdoors.
“We are not even enjoying our summer. There is a very bad smell,” Khanjan said. “Sometimes I just go for a run around New Brighton and when I get to that point where the car dealers are, it is really, really bad.”
He said the smell has been there since he moved to New Brighton six years ago, but this year he said it is worse.
“It is really, really bad. Honestly, I can’t even describe it. We feel like it is garbage. It’s a landfill, garbage smell,” Khanjan said.
The Shepard landfill is directly to the north of New Brighton, as is the city’s composting facility. There are also farm fields and wetlands in the area, all of which are potential suspects when it comes to the source of the stink.
“The one that has been prevalent right now, ruining folks’ evenings is like a sour garbage smell,” said Ward 12 Coun. Evan Spencer who addressed the issue in his blog this week. “It would smell a little bit like a dump, which of course leads people to believe it’s likely the dump.”
He said the Shepard landfill is not believed to be the cause of the problem.
Spencer went for a tour of the facility in April and says he was amazed at how little odour there was in the surrounding area.
“I am a little more concerned about the composting facility,” he said. “Anytime I drive around that area, that’s where I notice the odour the most… But it’s difficult to pinpoint.”
The City has invested in odour control systems at the compost facility which opened in 2017.
City officials said the air inside the facility is scrubbed for ammonia removal and run through a biofilter before being released outdoors.
Chinook Resource Management Group, which manages the facility, is required to manage odours from the facility so that they remain below an acceptable level. That is verified every year by a process that includes collecting air samples for analysis of odour levels.
The city said over the past several months, the operator of the compost facility has increased the strength of the solution being used in the air scrubbers and reduced the amount of finished compost stockpiled on site by over 60 per cent.
According to the city, “computer models have shown that odour from the composting facility should not be detectable in neighbouring communities.”
The facility will be replacing the biofilter material in 2022.
Spencer said there are peaks of the smell in the summer but it’s also been detected in the winter.
“It leaves city officials, and it leaves folks like myself and people that have been following the conversation for a while, to the conclusion that there are probably lots of different sources,” Spencer said.
Spencer added that residents have been tolerant of the smell.
“I believe the folks of those neighbourhoods, in particular, have learned to live with this to a degree,” he said. “I believe this past couple of weeks it has gone up a few notches likely. I’ve heard stories of folks with all their windows closed and even then, the odour fills the entire home.”
Khanjan said he respects that the landfill was there first but wonders why communities were built next to potentially smelly facilities.
“Why is it the City of Calgary allows these builders to build houses here while they know there is a landfill there?” Khanjan asked.
Spencer said the city has hired a third party that will start an odor investigation in August. He’s encouraging residents to call the city’s 311 service when they detect something that smells peculiar.
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