Burnside residents get answers to odor woes

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November 3, 2009

Engineers talk about smelly sewer station

By CHRIS HARRIS, CJ Staff Writer The Commonwealth Journal Tue Nov 03, 2009, 11:22 PM EST

The Burnside City Council sought to provide some answers for frustrated residents with a particularly foul problem at Monday’s November meeting.

Citizens living in the Cumberland Heights area of Burnside, just of Ky. 90, let the council know last month that they’d had it with the smell of the city’s sewer pump station — located right there at the entrance to the subdivision.

The sewery stench — particularly odious during warmer weather — had even caused some to consider selling their houses according to Oris Stanton, who spoke in October on behalf of the neighborhood’s homeowners association.

In an effort to assure citizens that something was being done, and to potentially arrive at a solution for the problem, repres-entatives from GRW engineers came to Monday’s council meeting. GRW, a regional firm headquartered in Lexington, engineered Burnside’s sewer system, which finally came to fruition in 2006 after many years of planning and fundraising.

One possible solution, according to GRW’s Alan Bryan: The sewer system isn’t complete yet. A section of Cumberland Heights, and a large area north of Ky. 90, has been waiting on sewer access. The city has now secured the necessary grant money to finish up the project, and the 75 or so additional sewer customers (currently about 400 Burnside residents use the sewer system) should help increase the flow of wastewater, which in turn will effect the smell.

That’s because when the sewage doesn’t move, it effectively gets stagnant and begins to stink. City officials said last month that they’ve tried to keep it flowing as often as possible, but it hasn’t been often enough. Part of the problem is the large containment unit, where it collects while the pumps seldom run, reducing healthy flow. Councilor Craig Richardson suggested reducing the size of the holding facility if GRW’s other solutions don’t work, although GRW’s Laura Gilkerson said regulations require a unit of that size currently.

Aeration will also play a role, said the GRW representatives. The wastewater needs oxygen to kill “all the bad bugs” that cause the smell, said Gilkerson. Pumping fresh air into the system should help alleviate the problem.

New sewer manager Richard Troxell, who was officially introduced at the meeting, also said that they’d try washing the pump down with more regularity — it’s recommended to be done every three months or so — and changing the charcoal filters which help eliminate odor. The filters are expensive, and Mayor Chuck Fourman told the Commonwealth Journal Tuesday that he had been in meetings that could lead to the city using a more expensive chemical that could potentially eliminate the need for the charcoal filters altogether.

Troxell said the sewer water was a “dark brown” color when he looked at it, and it should ideally be a “light brown” to avoid the kind of problems Cumberland Heights residents have experiences. He added that last month, the system averaged a flow of about 37,000 gallons per day — not a lot. “It’s just not pumping that much through it,” said Troxell.

That’s why the completed sewer should help K. Carrender Construction will likely begin work on the six-month project within a couple of weeks, meaning when summer rolls back around, the odor dilemma should be solved, or at least alleviated. Through the winter months, engineers expect it won’t be ad problematic.

It should also rely more on a gravity system as opposed to grinder pump flow, which is primarily what Burnside uses now. Gravity was seen as too costly at first because of the city’s hilly terrain, said Gilkerson, but Fourman expects that gravity technology, which keeps the flow moving a a more regular pace, will be better utilized in “phase 2” of the sewer project.

Councilor Dean Lovins, who lives in the area affected by the smell, was pleased with what he heard at the meeting. “I’m sure people would like to know ... that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

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