[Chorus]
Ooh, that smell
Can’t you smell that smell?
Ooh, that smell
The smell of death surrounds you
Sound familiar? Maybe a lyric from the 1977 album Street Survivors by Lynyrd Skynyrd?
You’re close.
It’s actually a verbatim complaint by dozens of Portsmouth Southend residents to the Department of Public Works about our brandy new, award winning, $100 million dollar, wastewater treatment plant.
As was learned at the July 15, 2024 City Council meeting, for about a month now, both of the plant’s sludge filter presses are inoperable. They apparently crapped out simultaneously from near continuous use. A third sludge filter press had been designed into the new treatment plant but was “value engineered out” before construction.
Translation: Rather than prudently spend the money on a badly needed third sludge filter press, the City decided spent that money on Washington DC based legal counsel to fight off lawsuits from USEPA and the Conservation Law Foundation that were suing Portsmouth to upgrade its 1960’s era wastewater treatment plant that had been befouling the Piscataqua River estuary for decades.
The new Wastewater Treatment Plant odor control system apparently is not working worth a bleep either. The carbon / potassium permanganate air filter media became depleted / spent years before the vendor had promised it would. The City legal department is working to resolve that issue.
See discussion at 1 hr, 25 min in video link below
Image credit: Methuen Construction
