East end stink

For the past few days, my Leslieville neighbourhood in Toronto’s east end has been stinking to high heaven.

It’s a familiar sewage smell that until recently was sometimes associated with the otherwise posh Beach area. The culprit: the Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant, said to be the largest secondary wastewater treatment plant in Canada. It has an odour problem, and (unlike a few guys I know) it admits it.

Now, Beach residents pay too much property tax to put up with nasty odours, so there’s been a plan in place for several years to contain and scrub away the stink. I’m not sure how you scrub stink away - bathe it in tomato juice? - and I’m not sure I want to know. (Read this .pdf or this one if you really care.)

Anyhow, I’m not sure what the status of that work is - the plan was completed five years ago, and presented (again) two years ago, but there’s no update on the City’s website since then. However, my family was down in the neighbourhood yesterday (letting our lowlife children play on the expensive playground equipment while nobody was looking) and it smelled just fine.

But now OUR neighbourhood smells - and we’re a few miles further away from the treatment plant!

My wife, seldom one for conspiracy theories, is convinced that the “treatment” plan consists of just piping the stench to less well-to-do neighbourhoods to the west.

Now, none of the neighbours had mentioned it, and there’s nothing in the papers or on the internet - not even the blogosphere. At first I thought we were going crazy, but then I got an e-mail from a CBC colleague who lives near us:

Have you noticed the vile sewage smell wafting off the (I assume) treatement plant? I’ve lived here for eight years and have NEVER noticed it this bad. The other day I could smell it clear to Broadview.

She has more gumption than I do, and took the initiative of calling our local city councillor, Paula Fletcher.

And no, we’re not crazy: her office said that have received about a dozen calls today and they are looking into the matter and have already contacted the ministry of environment.

So, we’re not imagining things. Something’s broken, and it stinks.

Beaches, come get your odour. Not in our backyard! We have bad smells of our own!

(There’s quite an olfactory battle going on in my block already… we’re equidistant between the lovely wafts coming from Weston bread factory, and the place the City parks its garbage trucks.)

So, what does your neighbourhood smell like?

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 07-17-2007 | 02:07 PM
Posted in: Toronto | Rants