The Globe & Mail rather lamely tries to connect Halifax’s failed sewage plant situation to the passing by of Hurricane/Tropical Storm/No Show Bill:
The hurricane barrelling down on Halifax this weekend promises to bring the glimmer of a silver lining to more than just the surfers eagerly awaiting big swells. Coming after a stretch of dry and atypically warm weather, the rains should also spell relief by temporarily flushing out the big sewage pipe that has left a nasty stench in parts of the downtown.
The persistent reek, caused by effluent turning septic after resting too long in a pipe that runs beneath the city, has resisted attempts at masking it and angered some business owners reliant on the waterfront tourist trade.
Described as ranging from “putrid” to “not too bad,” the smell hangs in the air as a foul reminder of the catastrophic malfunction that set back Halifax’s sewage-treatment plans by more than a year.
A local power failure in January caused an escalating series of problems at the new plant. One of the backup generators couldn’t handle the load and shut itself down. But the gate on the main pipe bringing effluent to the plant wasn’t quite closed. The barrier couldn’t be closed manually and raw sewage filled the below-ground portion of the facility.
I say “lamely” because while it’s true that the plant failure was (in part) related to the gate between the big pipe (really a tunnel) and the plant, the tunnel/pipe now has nothing whatsoever to do with the smell on the waterfront, and no matter how much rainfall Bill brings, none of it will run into the pipe leading to the sewer plant..
It’s clear the author of the piece is passingly familiar with my work, but he should read it a bit more closely.(see here and here) If so, he’d learn that since Jan. 14, our sewage has been diverted through eight combined sewage overflows leading directly into the harbour, before it reaches the big pipe leading to the plant.
It is true, that like every other time it rains, whatever rain Bill brings will serve to dilute the raw sewage in the harbour, and therefore the smell on the shore, but the “persistent reek” is not at all “caused by effluent turning septic after resting too long in a pipe that runs beneath the city.” That’s simply wrong. There is no back-up of sewage anywhere in the system, “turning septic.” And the day after Bill passes, we’ll be right back to the same degree of foul smell we had the day before Bill arrived.
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This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
God damn it Tim! The sewage will decompose and cause worse smells in other areas than the waterfront if there isn’t enough flow (rain) to flush out the lines. The city did a story on this last year!!! Get with it man. It isn’t about you and your work. Your work has been less than stellar…..
GDI– that’s simply wrong. It’s not how the system works.
Explaining further: any rain will flush out the sewage pipes under our streets, and serve to lessen the foul smell we notice coming up out of manhole covers– the passing smell that you notice within a few feet of the manhole covers, a little farther on very hot days. But the smell at the waterfront– the horrible stench that permeates downtown and the waterfront, is caused by the discharge of raw sewage out of the eight overflows into the harbour. It doesn’t pile up there– every tide takes it away, twice a day. And rain will make it less smelly, because it is watered down, same volume of shit in much greater volumes of water. But when the rain stops– hurricane or no– we’re right back to where we were in that regard.
And, the Globe & Mail is creating a fictitious problem– there is no shit “going septic” in a big pipe under the sewer plant. Someone wrote that without having any idea of the actual plumbing of the system. It’s wrong.
‘Coming after a stretch of dry and atypically warm weather, the rains should also spell relief by temporarily flushing out the big sewage pipe that has left a nasty stench in parts of the downtown.’
You had better check the Herald archives, because this very effect was explained last summer during a dry spell. In the GM quote above, they clearly state IN PARTS OF THE DOWNTOWN. Their assessment of what is going on is quite right. Even you acknowledge this in your second blurb!!!!!
‘…any rain will flush out the sewage pipes under our streets, and serve to lessen the foul smell we notice coming up out of manhole covers– the passing smell that you notice within a few feet of the manhole covers, a little farther on very hot days.’
The shit does indeed go septic in the pipes under the city….
Just a question — I really don’t know the answer and am curious.
I thought our storm sewers were separate from the sanitary sewers. Why then do we smell sewage coming from storm grates? Do you mean to tell me that the storm grate outside my window on the corner of the street I live on has sewage under it?
I’m baffled.
Bo Gus– except for a very few streets in the downtown area, we do not have separate sanitary and storm sewers. Hence, the combined sewage overflows. I explained the basics of this here:
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/peter-kelly…
Arg– the sewage in the sewage pipes, as opposed to the tunnel under downtown, or the sewage floating in the harbour, will get putrid if there is no rain. But ANY rain will flush that out– and we’ve had a lot of rain this summer. A hurricane won’t serve to flush it out any better than any other rain we’ve had in the last few weeks.
And, the smell they were talking about two years ago was really not at all comparable to the smell this year— as I’ve explained a thousand times, our present situation, in the downtown area, is worse than ever before, because before Harbour Solutions the sewage was spread out over several dozen outfall pipes; Harbour Solutions connected those outfall pipes into just eight CSOs, and those are concentrated (for the most part) around the boardwalk.
The raw sewage IN THE HARBOUR is the source of the bulk of the smell this summer– the smell coming from pipes under city streets is practically nothing in comparison. And tomorrow, the sewage will be flowing right back into the harbour just like it was yesterday, and the smell will be as bad.
We may have had a lot of rain, but that was in JULY, not August. August has been quite dry, and that kind of dryness in stretches will allow the sewage to sit in the tunnels and decompose. That decompostion will cause very nasty odors from areas other than the waterfront. Just ask anybody who lives beside manholes.
While the smell may not be of a VOLUME that is coming from the harbour, it is nonetheless there. And it is rancid and unpleasant. And that makes what the G&M be correct. The water flush from the hurricane will flush out the stagnant sewers and rid some people of sewer gas. And yes, it will be of a much more effective manner than the intermittent pittance of rain we’ve had in NS in August. There is more to Halifax than the waterfront….
“And that makes what the G&M be correct.”
You can say it 100 times, it doesn’t make it true. The Globe & Mail is wrong. If you read what they wrote, they are CLEARLY referring to the tunnel under the sewage plant (hence the mention of “big pipe” and the gate), and are straight forward saying that will be flushed by the rain. It won’t be. No rain will enter that pipe. They’re wrong.
You can say they are wrong 1000 times, and that doesn’t make it true either.
They are far closer to the truth than your analysis is. The mistake they made was that the sewage is in many pipes, not just one, and they WILL be flushed by the hurricane. You are just as wrong saying that rain won’t solve odor problems because sewage still goes into the harbour.
GM
‘has left a nasty stench in parts of the downtown.’
Coast
‘has nothing whatsoever to do with the smell on the waterfront’
You didn’t bother to read what/where they were referring to before your critique. You have both made errors in judgment. I don’t see where you can assume the high ground….
Why hasn’t anyone said the smell is “H2S gas”?
That is what it is. Hydrogen sulfide which is extremely dangerous. Besides being able to knock a person out or at worse kill them it will corrode cement and metal that is down in sewer system. Sewage has been sitting there for almost 9 months. You can mask the smell all you want but you have to get rid of the source of it.
Any science or chem eng student at Dal could even tell you that. Get rid of the gas smell and get rid of all the sewage that has built up at same time. Got get a gas meter and sticking the tube down into grates by the Casino and some spots down by Historic properties.