Some residents living near Sechelt's Ebbtide sewage treatment plant are lobbying for the District of Sechelt to fix a recurring subterranean rumble and rotten-egg stink.
Dale Macdonald, who lives on the east side of Sechelt marsh just over a block away from the plant, said he's been reporting the noise to the District for more than a year. He said the noise is a low-frequency subterranean rumble that sounds like a large truck idling on the street in front of his home.
"It really drills through you. It's just this rumble, rumble, rumble," he said. "And it goes day and night, in varying degrees of volume."
Macdonald said the District was initially helpful in addressing his concerns, which he began reporting in December 2008, and that on three separate occasions, the District managed to stop the noise for a period of several months through maintenance work.
But Macdonald said as of December 2009, the District has not responded to his satisfaction. Since then, he has been keeping the District informed of the problem by dispatching weekly "noise reports" detailing when the rumble has flared up.
Macdonald said approximately half a dozen of his neighbours are also very concerned about the noise, and that he's personally had to purchase a white noise machine in order to sleep through nights when the rumble is strong.
District chief administrative officer Rob Bremner said District employees, including director of engineering and public works Ken Tang, have visited the plant, but haven't heard the rumble.
"We've gone and parked around the area and parked there for hours and haven't really come up with anything," he said.
He also rebutted Macdonald's allegations that the District is not doing sufficient maintenance on the plant.
"Mr. Macdonald doesn't think that we're doing our maintenance, but in order to keep the plant functioning, we have to," he said.
Bremner noted Mac-donald has been very consistent in his reports, and that the District is thus looking for an outside expert -perhaps an acoustic engineer - to further investigate the reported rumble.
"We're going to bring in an independent engineer to poke around and see if they can find out because we don't seem to be hearing it, we don't seem to be getting to the bottom of it," he said.
The plant's periodic stink is also troubling neighbours.
Earl Shaw, who lives on Surf Circle, said the plant's recurring odour has been troubling him and other neighbours for 13 years.
"[Last] Thursday it was absolutely sickening," he said. "If you had been in my backyard then, you might have gagged."
Bremner said the District is hoping to address some of the odour problems with pipe upgrades and by using a different chemical cleaning agent, which nullifies the compound that produces the rotten egg smell.
Bremner said with a new biosolids treatment project planned in the coming years, plus a multi-million dollar sewage treatment plant longer term, the District needs to balance maintenance costs with saving for the upcoming capital costs.
"We certainly don't want to spend a significant amount of money in there," he said. "But we still have this system to deal with, we still have this system to maintain, and we have to make sure we do that because, of course, the alternative is that our system doesn't work and our sewage doesn't get treated."
