City: Work at Sewage Plant Contributing to Recent Odor Problems
Photo by Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING - Officials in the city of Wheeling are hopeful that relief from foul smells wafting from the city’s sewage treatment plant on the south end of Center Wheeling will soon arrive, as work on digesters and other improvements at the plant continue.
A number of residents and commuters have commented on the jarring aromas coming from the plant in recent weeks. This has been an ongoing situation for the facility, with some days much better than others.
Councilman Ty Thorngate this week noted that a lot of complaints have resurfaced about the odors coming from the city’s wastewater treatment plant recently.
"I don’t want to beat a dead horse here," he told City Manager Robert Herron this week during a city council meeting. "I know that over the last six to eight months, we’ve made significant investments trying to get that back up to snuff. But I can say that over the past couple of weeks, the smell has been terrible. On Sunday, I went to a Nailers game, and I could smell it up at WesBanco Arena, which rarely does that happen.
"Are there more investments that we need to make? Is there something that’s missing?"
The city manager noted that the recent round of stench can be attributed to ongoing work on the digesters.
"I am aware that the last couple of weeks, the smell has been particularly pungent," he said. "I was down there Friday and alerted the staff to that."
On certain days, the smell is not nearly as bad, Herron indicated. But on other days, it gets everyone’s attention.
The digester project is almost completed," Herron said. "As they finish it, it does expose sludge to the air, which does obviously emit the smell that’s occurring at the wastewater treatment plant."
Herron noted that this current digester project is wrapping up, and some other significant improvements are forthcoming.
"Council has awarded two very important contracts for dewatering the sludge," he explained. "One is a screw press project which is a $1.2 million investment, and then a couple of weeks ago, it was the building of the screw press that will go in. So we are making progress."
In September, city council approved an ordinance authorizing a $767,290 contract with Grae-Con Construction Inc. of Steubenville for Wastewater Treatment Plant sludge dewatering improvements to be charged to the city’s 2025 bond issue for water and wastewater projects. In June, the city approved a $999,929 contract with Esmil Corp of Mogadore, Ohio for procurement of dewatering equipment for the plant, with costs associated with the project also being paid from funding through the 2025 bond.
While this work being done promises to make significant improvements at the treatment plant, undertaking the work will likely stir things up a bit and inevitably create additional odors, officials indicated.
"Those contracts - the digester cleaning plus the screw presses - are issues associated with handling sludge, which has created the smell at this point," Herron said. "So hopefully things will improve dramatically. It is a wastewater treatment plant - we can’t cut it completely, but we do recognize that the last couple of weeks have been pretty rough."