Residents of southeast Calgary are a step closer to being able to get a breath of fresh air without also taking in foul odours.
Warm weather this week brought the bad smells back to areas like New Brighton, whose residents have complained about it in the past.
And after some air sampling and analysis from engineering services company Jacobs Solutions, the city has some recommendations on how to mitigate some of the issues.
The Shepard landfill is “operating well within its regulations,” Ward 12 Coun. Evan Spencer said, with “very little odour” coming from garbage there.
“But there are some challenges that have been identified relating to the composting facility in terms of the finished product, where it’s being stored, how long it’s sitting outdoors,” he said.
“And then also right now they’re going through the replacement of their biofilter. So I believe there’s some of what residents are experiencing right now is related to that.”
The nearby biosolids lagoons appear to be a cause of bad smells in the area.
“They’ve had a long, long ongoing issue that tends to get it localized around that facility,” Spencer said. “The misting system has been installed in the past. There’s an opportunity for that to be used in a better, more fulsome way.”
Solid waste from the city’s waste treatment plant are sent to the biosolids facility to allow it to cure and become fertilizer.
Spencer said that fertilizer is then used to grow food for animals in the Calgary Zoo.
“There’s some neat things that that program is doing. But especially on a hot day in the middle of summer, if you drive past that facility, keep your windows up,” he said.
The area councillor said the study focused on odour-reduction steps for city-owned assets while also recognizing there are other things like wetlands, agriculture and industrial lands that could be impacting smells in the area.
The city is still evaluating the report it received this week and will be deciding on a timeline for the various steps, one which particularly caught Spencer’s attention.
“We were particularly excited about the option that (Jones) put forward for setting up a community interface with the most affected residents so that they have people to talk to about how this is impacting them and to get straight updates from the mouths of those that are implementing them at the compost facility, at the the waste or the biosolids facility and then also at the landfill,” he said.