Sewage Smell Lingers For Weeks In Parts Of Tremonton
Dec 22, 2020, 6:33 PM | Updated: 8:15 pm
TREMONTON, Utah – A malfunction at the wastewater treatment plant in Tremonton caused a terrible odor to take over much of the city.
The stench has lingered for weeks. The worst of it is over, but it is still pretty bad in certain parts of town.
If you find yourself downwind you just might catch a whiff or two.
There's a smell problem in Tremonton. A malfunction at the wastewater plant released some nasty fumes. How it happened, and how long it will linger, on @KSL5TV at 6pm. pic.twitter.com/Deb2D0IMfc
— Mike Anderson (@mikeandersonKSL) December 22, 2020
“Just very sulphuric, nasty, rotten,” resident Kyle Brown said.
“It’s super rotten. It smells kind of like a manure pit, or like rotten eggs, or something dead. It’s kind of nasty,” Elizabeth Wilkinson added.
It all started where the poop ends.
“It was a big mess,” said Paul Fulgham, Tremonton’s Public Works director. He said the problem came from basins at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
“These are the discs that actually put the oxygen into the water,” he said.
Some of them started to come apart.
“And because they came apart they went into our effluent out of the basin and ended up into our pump station,” Fulgham said. “So we had to shut everything down to remove these from the pump station.”
Everything had to be taken apart.
“This is the first time we’ve had this particular thing happen in the 20 years I’ve been here,” Fulgham said.
Since that is what happened, no oxygen was being put into the system.
“You start producing the smells, methane gases and stuff like that start being produced,” Fulgham explained.
Wilkinson had to laugh. “Oh that’s lovely,” she said.
Luckily, everything was back together Tuesday and things are churning like they should, with oxygen getting to the bacteria that breaks up all that junk.
“Hopefully in a week or two and the smells will dissipate and go away,” Fulgham said.
A lot of that good bacteria died in this malfunction, so public works employees brought sewage from the Brigham City plant to replenish the supply in Tremonton.
They just need that bacteria to repopulate and the wind to blow away the remaining smell.
