Sewer plant upgrade deteriorated nearby neighborhood’s quality of life

A Wareham neighborhood has been living with a regular smell of feces coming from a nearby wastewater treatment plant. Their solution during the spring — trying to mask the smell by burning woodchips —  filled nearby homes with smoke.

Now, Sewer Department Director Scott Kraihanzel is working to wrap up the plant’s construction work and control odor.

The Water Pollution Control facility at 6 Tony’s Lane first had odor control issues in 2015. 

The plant produced 77 consecutive days of stench, a 2019 joint complaint from the neighborhood signed by 25 residents said. 

The plant is located near a neighborhood, which can increase air quality concerns and other health concerns for those residents. Some residents have lived with the stench since 2005, when a row of trees near Linwood Avenue, which acted as a sound and smell buffer between the plant and homes, was removed to install a wastewater basin.

“The odors can be overpowering, waking residents up at night. Not knowing when the noxious odors will erupt, or odor duration, impacts daily routines and makes it difficult for families to plan events. The odor permeates our homes,” the complaint said. “Some residents do not have air-conditioning, so closing windows to escape the smell is not an option in the heat and humidity.”

Some residents had compromised breathing due to medical conditions, and the odor impacted their health, according to the complaint. Other residents reported headaches, nausea and lethargy due to sleep interruption.

The odor was resolved in 2019, but a recent upgrade to the sewer plant changed that. The plant has been under construction for the past two years to install a vehicle storage building and new equipment, including two new clarifiers and a sodium hydroxide injection system. 

With odor control not working, Kraihanzel said “the last two years have been pretty bad.” While the odor is a nuisance, he said, it won’t harm anyone’s health.

This April, the plant burned wood chips in smokers as an odor control method. The method didn’t work and filled the neighborhood and homes with smoke. The Board of Health issued a cease and desist order to the facility later that same day. 

Neighborhood resident Sally Morrison said “there was ash falling from the sky.” A resident called the fire department thinking the smoke came from a fire.

“The smoke built and built until there were blankets of smoke,” Morrison said at a meeting with the Board of Health on Aug. 19, where Kraihanzel was also present. “There are several people with compromised respiratory systems in the neighborhood. This was in April, and it was so much that you could see smoke inside your homes.”

She said the neighborhood “takes the hit” with every plant upgrade, which has been more frequent. She wanted the plant to consider how policies and procedures will impact the neighborhood. 

The project is due to be completed in early spring 2027. A wastewater plant in a neighborhood will sometimes still have odor without construction, but after construction, routine odor control should work and be much more manageable, he said. 

“We are doing a number of things to wrap up all the construction, and once things are working the way they should, the expectation is the odor should dissipate significantly,” Kraihanzel said.