Tara Jeffrey
Two smelly sludge lagoons that have sparked countless complaints about a foul smell over the city were sold by Sarnia to a private company for $1 just two years ago.
Sarnia council not only sold the 30-acre Scott Road Sewage Lagoon site to Brantford-based Wessuc Inc. for a buck, it also gave the company $1.7 million for remediation work, and another $100,000 towards an environmental assessment.
A sewage stench arising from the site and described as “gaggingly bad” has had residents and politicians alike up in arms in recent weeks.
(See story below for more on the “big stink”)
The lagoons were used to treat Sarnia’s municipal sewage until the treatment plant was upgraded in the early 2000s, confirmed David Jackson, the city’s manager of engineering and operations.
The lagoons were never formally decommissioned and sat unused for about 20 years, he said.
The property was originally an industrial dumpsite before Sarnia purchased it from Polymer Corporation in 1961.
Contamination from the original dump was discovered near the surface in 2019, sparking “significant environmental concerns,” Jackson said.
“There was the potential for very significant costs to deal with that contamination. That's when the idea came up to try to dispose of the site to avoid the financial risk related to that,” he said.
Wessuc Inc.’s purchase of the property included the pipeline from the lagoon to the wastewater treatment plant.
The deal came with conditions. Sarnia agreed to pay $1.7 million over three years to remove existing biosolids from the lagoon, and $100,000 to complete an environmental assessment of the contamination.
“As part of the sale, we did contribute funds to remove the sludge material that was the city’s there before,” Jackson said. “And then why it was sold for a dollar, is, we were passing on that additional environmental study and remediation work to the new property owner to deal with.”
Wessuc Inc. and its affiliated Shire Corporation specialize in the management of biosolids and tank and lagoon cleaning services for agricultural, municipal and industrial clients.
The Sarnia operation is a waste disposal and transfer site. It includes two lined lagoons approved to receive and temporarily store organic waste materials, including sludge from human sewage.
Wessuc was convicted last August for three violations under the Environmental Protection Act for transferring soil conditioners to unapproved sites. It was fined $60,000 plus a victim surcharge of $15,000.
The company has come under fire in recent weeks following complaints of an unbearable smell arising from the Scott Road site.
Wessuc said it’s working with the Ontario’s Environment Ministry to resolve the problem.
“The odours are unacceptable,” said Jackson, noting it's a provincial, not a municipal issue. “We are still doing our part to pressure the company to quickly implement mitigation measures to stop the odour.”
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Company says it’s working on sewage smell complaints
Tara Jeffrey
Scott Williams hasn’t been able to open his windows for weeks.
“It’s gaggingly bad here at times,” the Sarnia resident said of the persistent, foul odour linked to the Scott Road sludge lagoon and upsetting residents since April.
“You can walk down the street and people are kind of turning their noses, not sure what’s going on,” Williams said. “If you open the windows and it hits you it’s like, literally, someone’s port-a-john dumped inside your home.”
Complaints of the intense sewage odour have poured in to both the City of Sarnia and Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
The smell has carried across most of the city at some point, depending on wind direction.
Brantford-based Wessuc Inc. and its affiliate Shire Corporation own the 30-acre Scott Road property and operate a waste disposal and transfer site there. It recently addressed resident concerns.
“We do not take these complaints lightly and apologize for odours caused by our operations,” vice president Hank VanVeen stated in a letter to Mayor Mike Bradley and Sarnia council. “Organic waste operations can lead to odour.”
The site is approved to receive and temporarily store organic waste. That includes treated sewage solids and spent corn syrup from a fermentation process, which can be applied to farmland as fertilizer, according to the Ministry.
Sewage biosolids come from municipal wastewater treatment facilities, which separate the liquid from the leftover solids. Solids go through an additional treatment process to reduce potentially harmful organisms, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
Sewage biosolids that don’t exceed the regulatory limits for contaminants, pathogens and odour are called non-agricultural source material (NASM) and can be applied to farmland.
“The material is being stored at the lagoon facility until it can be moved to an agricultural site,” the company said. “Crop scheduling, crop type, growing period and water all play a role in determining when NASM is moved from storage to the agriculture site.”
The lagoons were originally used as an industrial dump before the city purchased them from Polymer Corporation in 1961. They were converted to sludge lagoons for Sarnia’s wastewater treatment plant, but, following upgrades to the plant in the early 2000’s, were no longer required and the city never formally decommissioned them.
In 2020, Wessuc Inc. agreed to purchase the property for $1, with the condition the city pay $1.7 million in remediation costs and $100,000 toward an environmental assessment.
Spokesperson Gary Wheeler said Environment Ministry staff has been in regular contact with the company since April to address odour complaints, and were onsite as recently as June 5 to confirm odours were present.
Recent efforts to reduce the smell include using straw coverage, limiting the number of loads coming in, and removing 11,000 cubic metres of material from the site. A storage tank was expected to arrive late last week, to be used to accept material and mix it to control odours before entering the lagoons.
Wessuc added they’ve applied one dose “of a product that reduces odour generation to both lagoons” and planned to repeat the process.
“Additional plans include increasing the biodiversity on site, such as increased tree coverage to minimize surface to air interaction, and sourcing new pumping equipment to minimize material mixing during removal,” the company said.
The issue was raised at last week’s Sarnia council meeting when Coun. George Vandenberg said he visited the area.
“Whatever’s going on back there — the smell was overwhelming,” he said. “And there’s a lot of people talking about it and a lot of people don’t even want to sit on their porches anymore.”
Williams, meanwhile, has sent complaints to the city, the ministry, and reached out to the company for answers.
“I’m not trying to make a big stink about it,” he said. “I get it — business is business.
“But a good community partner treats the area in which they operate as if it’s their own backyard — and that’s not happening here.”