LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Residents across the western portion of Fayette County expressed disgust over a waft of a sewage smell in their neighborhood, and now the city is sharing how it plans to dilute the smell long-term.
For more than a year, hundreds of residents have complained about the putrid smell from nearby wastewater treatment plants. The Lexington water quality director says there's a plan in place to fix it.
"What I smelled yesterday smelled like wet socks," explains Martin. "We're treating air with activated carbon in the same way you would treat water on a filter that you had hooked to your sink."
Martin says it's effective but tricky. The first installation is activated carbon to pull out contaminants from the air in order to release a more neutralized odor. It also depends on how concentrated the odor is though.
"If it's a highly concentrated odor, you can put activated carbon in and it's not going to last very long," explains Martin.
A caustic scrubber is another item that's on the agenda.
Covering Kentucky
Man claims Veterans Park neighbor 'smells of sewage'
"They spray treated water down and the air up flows in the opposite direction and the odor compounds get removed on these spherical balls," says Martin.
Weather and time of day can also play a large role when the smell is at its strongest: "What happens in Kentucky is that it gets warm during the daytime in the fall, but then it gets cool, and that cool air drops to the ground. And so it has a tendency to trap everything at the ground surface."
According to Webster Environmental Associates research, 66% of the problem at the West Heckman tank is how much the sludge holding tanks aerate while holding the soon-to-be processed sewage. That's why premium odor control is being installed.
"Everybody points at the treatment plant and says that's the problem but sometimes the problem doesn't generate, it generates itself somewhere else," says Martin. "We're trying to attack this in a big picture type of thing."
Martin will also focus his attention on smoke testing to ensure that the plant's air isn't being pumped into homes nearby due to plumbing issues.
