A perfect storm of events left a not so perfect smell.
So on Tuesday, the city got to work dropping what amounted to 20-pound urinal cakes throughout downtown manholes.
“We’ve been working on it,” said Jerry Stewart, the city’s director of waste resources. “We just don’t have any rainfall or moisture to wash this out.”
The city’s downtown sewers and a portion of the sewer system in North Chattanooga are combined, so every time it becomes dry some of the leftover muck gets stuck in P-traps, officials said. With no significant rainfall in months, it helps create some of the foul downtown odor.
Even more of a foul odor than usual wafted through downtown Monday. City records show the 311 call center received about 20 complaints of foul odor. Bruce Garner, spokesman for the Chattanooga Fire Department, said his department answered almost two dozen complaints.
He said firefighters checked the air with gas monitors, called the Chattanooga Gas Co. and finally figured out it was coming from the 100-year-old sewer system under their feet.
Garner said it’s not uncommon for his department to get calls.
“When they smell something unusual, they call the fire department,” he said.
Stewart said Monday’s events were made even worse by an unusual sludge that made its way to the plant. He said the plant received an “oily discharge” from a pretreated substance that helped overwhelm the system. He said it definitely helped fill the air with foulness.
“I think that contributed to the problem,” he said.
The city is in the midst of talking to the company that dumped the sludge to see where and what exactly it came from, he said.
He said the city has put out about 25 deodorant blocks.
They won’t completely solve the problem, but it helps “mask it,” he said.
And city workers dumping the blocks Tuesday said those who smell the block definitely have a preference: Cherry.
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