Residents living near the town’s sewage lagoons next to the Osoyoos Golf Club are calling on council to address the odour. (© Google Maps)

By Vanessa Broadbent

Osoyoos Times

Residents living near the Town of Osoyoos’ sewage lagoons are calling on the town to do something about the smell emitting from the area.

On Tuesday morning town council was presented with a petition signed by over 140 residents living in the golf course area on the west side of town.

Gordon Kandola lives on Golf Course Drive and decided to start the petition after noticing that the smell was stronger this summer. While the smell is common every year, he said it lasted for two and a half months this year.

“It was kind of embarrassing to have relatives or visitors over to the house because normally in the summertime you want to go barbecue, you want to sit outside and enjoy – that’s what Osoyoos is all about. But we couldn’t do much.”

So Kandola reached out to his neighbours to see if they were bothered by the smell as well.

“People were so glad that I was going around and talking to them about this problem,” he said. “They said, ‘yes, the problem exists for years and this year it’s worse.’”

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Pebble Beach Drive resident Sandra Hachey presented the petition to council, and told them that not only does the smell make sitting outside unbearable, but she has to keep her windows closed at night as well.

“We are just fed up and we want to know if the town has something planned and is there any plans to resolve the problem,” Hachey said.

Director of Operations Jared Brounstein explained that the strong odour is the result of an increase of people using the system in the summer.

“Our system is designed for 20,000 people. We normally only have 5,000 people servicing it so what happens is in the summer the loads go through the roof and that causes additional flow in the system and unfortunately our system is not designed to keep up with it instantaneously,” he said. “By the end of summer the system has now settled back down and smells dissipate.”

Other factors include that the sewage system uses “no-flow” stations, which see little to no flow throughout the year. Sewage travels between the stations, but may sit in one for several weeks. It can take over a month for the sewage to reach the lagoons.

“By the time the sewage gets all the way down here it’s now septic, so it’s extra rank, extra smelly. It sits and gets pumped into our main lift and heads up to the lagoons and as soon as it hits the pumping system it’s aerated, so it releases that smell even more,” Brounstein said.

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As for why the odour has increased this summer specifically, Brounstein said he didn’t have an answer, but it changes from year to year and “some years you guys get really bad smell, other years it’s not so bad.”

Hachey asked if the town has considered using Acti-Zyme, a combination of bacteria and enzymes that increase the rate of digestion of organic waste and reduce the smell.

Town staff are meeting with an Acti-Zyme supplier next week, Brounstein said, but are aware that the product may not remove the odour completely.

“They’re hit and miss – unless we go into a full chemical analysis of our waste water system it may not effectively address the odour issue. It may, I don’t know until we go through the process, but we are going to give it a whirl.”

Resident Garry Ford asked if the town has considered a bylaw mandating low-flow toilets to reduce the amount of water entering the system, especially from hotels.

“The majority of them have toilets that are 40 years old. They consume a lot of water per flush,” Ford said. “They say we have 15,000 (hotel) beds, well we may have 10,000 toilets that are all flushing two or three gallons with each flush. It’s way in excess.”

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Mayor Sue McKortoff said there are bylaws in place that require new and renovated buildings to use low-flow toilets.

“We can’t go into the old ones and say ‘you have to change your toilet’ but there are lots of people that when they do upgrade are mandated to change it to fit in.”

McKortoff assured residents that the town is “looking at everything” to address the smell.

“Believe me, it consumes all of us on a daily basis at town hall,” she said. “If there was a magic wand that we could wave we would have done it.”

Kandola said council and town staff are trying their best to lessen the odour, but he hopes to see a change in place by next year.

“I hope we don’t have to go through another summer like we did this summer,” he said.

“They realize the problem is there but to fix it properly is up to them. We conveyed the message to them – let’s see what they are going to do and hopefully they start something soon.”