'It's nauseating': Residents in Kentville, New Minas raising big stink about recurring sewage plant odour
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Spring is in the air and so is a familiar stench in New Minas and Kentville.
Some residents in the neighbouring Annapolis Valley communities are fed up with the recurring pungent odours from the regional sewage treatment plant in New Minas and say it's time for the Municipality of the County of Kings to come up with a solution once and for all.
"It's nauseating, it's overwhelming. I'm sure it's not good for our physical health. And it's been going on for too long," said Sue Smiley, an avid cyclist whose outings frequently take her past the plant, which sits adjacent to the Harvest Moon Trail that connects several Valley communities.
The regional treatment plant in New Minas is the municipality's largest, and services Kentville, New Minas, Coldbrook, Greenwich and several private industries.
The smell comes and goes, residents say, but when it arrives, it makes outdoor activities unbearable. It is particularly troublesome in hot, humid weather.
Dawn Noakes of New Minas, who owns a dog grooming business in Kentville, said she started smelling the odour about a year after she moved to the area.
"In 2018, we noticed an outhouse type of odour. It went on for a few days and we didn't think much about it, but then it went on for a month," said Noakes.
Seven years later, the smell persists.
"We've settled in this subdivision and we love it there. Our neighbours are great. The properties are lovely. I love where I live, but I can't enjoy where I live," said Noakes, who created a Facebook group where residents have taken their complaints about the situation.
Kristin Lohnes, a student at the Nova Scotia Community College in Kentville, is a member of the Facebook group. She describes the odour as being similar to rotting food.
"It can get to a point where it's making people physically sick, myself included. We get headaches and nausea and it's not a good scene. And where I myself have asthma, it's been rough," said Lohnes.
In a statement to CBC News, chief administrative officer Scott Conrad said the municipality is working with "outside experts" to determine the cause of the odour and resolve it as quickly as possible.
The municipality has identified a problem that "appears to be a lack of oxygen in the first of five lagoons wastewater cycles through during the treatment process," the statement said.
"The community is understandably asking for prompt action and long-term improvements, and the Municipality is determined to deliver."
But Kentville resident Robyn Joys questioned whether the system is equipped to handle a slew of new housing developments.
"They don't have the infrastructure in order to upkeep all the 200 more or so toilets that are flushing and they should have never been approved before they addressed the sewage system," said Joys.
The municipality's website details a number of upgrades to the treatment plant amounting to $9 million in improvements since 2017.
It's not enough for Noakes.
"It's the same rhetoric. It's like this is what the problem is and this is what we've done, but we haven't resolved the problem yet," she said.
The municipality posted another update after a recent council meeting. It said it is working with "engineering firms with experience in wastewater treatment" to get the odour at the plant "under control," and outlined short- and long-term solutions.
But residents like Joys are still waiting for results.
"It's been too many years where we've had this issue.… And I'm very tired of excuses and I just would like to stop smelling the stink," she said.
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