Residents of Longueuil have long endured a foul smell, but city officials finally pinpointed its source and are planning a solution.
Longueuil: For years, folks at the corner of Collège Street and Kimber Boulevard have been dealing with a terrible smell. It’s so bad that one resident, Francine Morissette, described it as smelling like diarrhea. Yikes!
People in the neighborhood have been asking for answers, and the city has tried a couple of fixes. They even redid the streets and sidewalks last year, but that just made things worse. Then, they put in carbon filters in the sewers, but the smell stuck around.
Finally, the city brought in an engineering team to figure it all out. They held a meeting recently to share what they found. Turns out, the stench is coming from roof vents on houses connected to the sewage system. Who would’ve thought?
City spokesperson Louis-Pascal Cyr explained that they initially thought the smell was coming from manholes. But after digging deeper, they discovered it was the vents on the roofs that were the culprits. The sewage system in that area is lower than the rest of the neighborhood, which traps the odors and sends them up through the vents.
To tackle this issue, Longueuil plans to build an odor treatment unit to clean up the air. They’re hoping this will finally put an end to the smell that’s been bothering residents for so long.
Construction is set to kick off this fall, but some locals are frustrated with the timeline. They’re bracing for another summer of that awful smell. One resident, Serge Rancourt, expressed his disappointment, saying it’s been a problem since he moved in back in 2021.
Rancourt and his neighbors have been pushing for a solution, and it’s taken a lot of pressure and media attention to get things moving. Now, they’re left wondering if the new system will actually work. The purification unit will be set up outside a stormwater pumping station, and the city estimates it’ll cost around $538,000.
