‘The smell is poop’: Hamilton councillors field complaints about sewage odour

On some mornings in Binbrook, Larry Murphy can smell the stench emanating from a new trunk sewer servicing the village.

Even driving to work with my truck windows up," says Murphy, who owns the Home Hardware on Highway 56.

The foul odour is a stubborn problem city water staff are trying to solve as councillors along the new pipe's path field complaints from residents.

It's frustrating, and I'm not hearing it's in one particular place. It's all along 56," said Coun. Brenda Johnson, who represents Binbrook.

Johnson raised the stink during a public works budget session Wednesday that touched on the city's massive tunnelling effort to build the upgraded trunk sewer that connects Binbrook to the Woodward wastewater plant in the lower city.

Residents along the pipe's route in Upper Stoney Creek have also griped about sewage odours over the past two years, Coun. Brad Clark added.

May I be candid? The smell is poop," Clark said. That's the smell that residents along Upper Centennial Parkway are having to deal with on a regular basis."

He and Johnson said the odours seem to emanate from candy cane" vents that follow the trunk's path.

Staff are trying to pinpoint" where the smell is coming from, said Andrew Grice, the city's water director.

We do not have a firm answer yet."

But he said the city is installing a chemical inhibitor" at the Binbrook pumping station to try to control the odour as staff continue to suss out its origin.

In an interview, Grice said the odour is hydrogen sulphide, a rotten egg type of smell" resulting from materials degrading in the wastewater system. It's not uncommon odour for us to experience."

But there was a spike in complaints from Binbrook residents in 2019 and 2020 that coincided with the commissioning of the new sewage pipe, he added.

During the meeting, Johnson expressed frustration over dispatching staff to the field only to later hear they didn't smell anything upon arrival. But we know that there is a problem."

Dan McKinnon, public works general manager, said he appreciates the stench is very evident" to residents.

I will confess that odour problems, they are like ghosts sometimes."

If residents reach public works directly by calling 905-546-CITY, it will allow staff to respond more quickly, Grice told The Spectator.

He expects a full report on the trunk sewer stench to be before the public works committee in March.

The department proposes a 3.1 per cent hike, or $8 million more, to support its 2021 operations, which range from tree planting and garbage pickup to shoreline protection and traffic operations.

In his presentation, McKinnon paid special attention to Hamilton's sidewalk program at the request of councillors.

Every year, the city inspects the city's 2,445 kilometres of sidewalks to identify which slabs of concrete meet minimum maintenance standards."

The city employs four co-op students from May to August every year to pound the pavement and gather the data.

Those provincial standards dictate that if there's a discontinuity" of more than two centimetres, the sidewalk must be repaired.

But McKinnon said his suspicion" is that at least some calls from residents to councillors' offices about unsightly cracks don't meet that threshold for repair.

In 2019, public works tallied 4,146 sidewalk problems that contravened the minimum standards and 136,224 other ones that didn't.

To address all of them would cost about $44 million, McKinnon said.

But on an annual basis, we have about $6 million devoted to our sidewalk program, so there's a delta of about $38 million."

The public works budget is part of the city's overall operating budget for 2021, which calls for a preliminary increase of 2.5 per cent, or $92 more for the average household.

Deliberations are scheduled to wrap up at the end of March.

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com