Sludge Watch ==> Tennessee - Children, can you spell odiferous?

[Maureen Reilly]

Children, can you spell odoriferous?
Leon Sheffield people hold noses to endure sewer stink

By Bayne Hughes
DAILY Education Writer
hughes at decaturdaily.com · 340-2432
Pupils get creative when dealing with the stink at Leon Sheffield 
Elementary.
They pull their shirts over their faces, put toilet paper in their nostrils 
and, of course, there's the pinch-your-nose-until-you-reach-your-ride move.
The problem is not a new one, but the staff and pupils are new to the school 
this year. They were thrilled to be in a new building, but then the wind 
started blowing from the north and they found out what it means to go to 
school across the highway from a sewage treatment plant.
Despite millions of dollars spent to remove the smell, the plant still 
stinks. The next step to solve the problem sounds like a giant air 
freshener.
Formerly located at Gordon-Bibb Elementary School and the Lurleen B. Wallace 
Center, the third-, fourth- and fifth-grade magnet school moved into the 
renovated Leon Sheffield in August as part of a new desegregation plan.
Decatur Utilities' timing wasn't the best. According to Gas, Water and 
Wastewater Manager Gary Borden, the plant received materials in August that 
caused a plant "upset," a term for unusual materials getting into the system 
and upsetting the process. He said multiple tests never identified the 
material or its origin. He said sometimes companies' chemical discharges mix 
and cause an unexpected reaction. The plant had to press out additional 
sludge and place it on a cement pad for drying before getting it hauled off.
He said there was so much that it took a contractor, Synagro, working 
overtime during August to haul the sludge to three or four permitted sites 
in Morgan County for disposal.
"Most of the odor was coming off that (the sludge)," Borden said.
Borden said the plant also had an additional amount of oil and grease 
stripped out of the sewage water as part of the process of sitting in a dry 
bed and waiting for disposal.
Problem not new
DU has heard the complaints before. Residents in this Northwest Decatur 
neighborhood and those who worked at and attended Leon Sheffield when it was 
a neighborhood school complained for years.
In 2002, the utility completed a $21 million upgrade, part of which included 
about $1.2 million for six covers for the primary clarifier and a duct 
system to pull odoriferous gas from the clarifier tanks and then "scrub" the 
gas with chlorine chemicals to remove the strong smell.
"I went to school here (in 1979), and the smell really hasn't changed much," 
said parent Chad McClellan while waiting in the car line for his 
fifth-grader.
When they first moved into this school this summer, Principal Barbara 
Sittason said she hoped DU could control the smell so they at least would 
not smell it inside. So far, that's not been the case.
On some days like Wednesday, the smell is overwhelming in the third-grade 
classes and the new lunchroom on the north end of the building along Alabama 
20. It's hard to make a meal appetizing with the stench of sewage.
"It's like this several times a week," third-grade teacher Shundra Morris 
said. "It's pretty bad, but you get used to it."
Fellow third-grade teacher Carol Davis said she does not smell the odor most 
days, but some days were extremely bad. She said she prefers her new 
environment to their former home at Gordon-Bibb, an 87-year-old building 
that was deteriorating badly before the school board demolished it in the 
summer of 2005.
"At least we don't have things growing in our restrooms," Davis said. "The 
smell is the least of my worries. This place is wonderful."
Wednesday was the first day physical education teacher John Albert took his 
pupils outside, but he said it wasn't because of the smell. He said it was 
because the newly renovated school doesn't have any grass yet.
"We could smell it at first and we cut a few jokes about it, but then you 
get used to it and it doesn't affect us that much," Albert said.
Parent Carol Hixon, waiting for her third-grade son in the car line, said 
she has driven by on Alabama 20 before her son moved to Leon Sheffield and 
noticed the smell, "but I didn't know it was this bad."
Since their pupils can attend a magnet school, parents chose between Leon 
Sheffield or remaining at their neighborhood school. Hixon's daughter is in 
preschool now, and she said the smell would make her think twice about 
whether to send her to Leon Sheffield.
Sittason said she hopes parents would look at the school's curriculum and 
activities when considering her school. She said she appreciated DU's 
cooperation in trying to limit the stink. Borden recently spoke at a PTA 
meeting.
"I would hope they would look beyond the smell, which doesn't happen too 
often, and look at what's going on inside the school," she said.
Borden said help is on the way.
DU is spending $5,500 to install a spraying system, kind of like a large air 
freshener, to broadcast a mist on the sludge as a masking agent. Borden let 
Sittason choose the fragrance, and she chose a citrus smell.
"We're never going to completely get rid of the smell, but we can try to 
minimize it as much as possible," he said.

http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/060924/stink.shtml