City copes with sour-smelling lagoons

A foul smell coming from the wastewater treatment plant has made its presence well known amongst residents.

A media release from the city attributed these smells to “turnovers” that occur during extended warm periods. These turnovers allow odors trapped in the deeper parts of the lagoon to come to the surface.

The release also stated that the increase in the number of RVs dumping their waste at the plant’s dump station caused an overload, which only furthered the bad smells.

According to Mark Westenscow, the director of public works, there is no way to fix the problem. With nothing particularly wrong with the equipment or the plant itself, residents as well as city workers have to wait it out. In the meantime, the city is taking steps to minimize the smells by pumping air into the lagoon in order to create the proper environment for waste decomposers.

These odors often happen during this time of the year.

The Green River wastewater treatment plant was originally constructed in 1962 as a single lagoon. Prior to that, wastewater was discharged into the river with no treatment.

In the 1970s the large lagoon was divided into small and easily treatable cells. As the population grew the primary aerated cells were added. In the 1980s aeration was added to some of the lagoons as well as intermittent sand filters.

The configuration of the wastewater plant has not changed since the last updates in the 1980s.

This results in a large amount of the operating equipment being more than 30 years old and the lagoons themselves are even older. Due to this situation, the city plans to build a new wastewater treatment facility.

This new facility has a construction budget of $27.6 million. Bids for the project will be going out this fall, with hopes of construction beginning in the spring of 2021. Westenscow also said residents shouldn’t have to stress about these odors after the construction of this new facility because it uses a completely different process.

The process of the new facility will be more controlled as well as more up to date with current standards.