People who live or work near Skagway’s Waste Water Treatment facility have a love-hate relationship with warm calm days. Sure, it’d be lovely to go outside and soak up some rays in the backyard, but, oh that smell.
Long-time Skagway resident Andrew Beierly lives just north of the facility and remembers those ripe days during busy cruise ship seasons of the past.
“The fan was on the north side. So when they turn that fan on, you know, it just blew right up the street past my house. But it was so bad. You know, years ago, it was so bad that you could smell out all the way over by the T-shirt shop, it just floated all over.” Beierly says the odor hasn’t been egregious yet this summer though.
Skagway’s Borough Manager Brad Ryan explains how the new system works.
“It’s a Photoionization unit, which my understanding is, it has some carbon filters in it and it has UV sterilization, I guess I’ll call it. So essentially, and there are some curtains that we hang around the areas that produce the smell so that it all gets ducted into this unit that then filters out the smell and pumps the air outside afterward,” said Ryan.
According to Waste Water Superintendant Matt Deach, the wastewater comes in through the sewer system and goes into a large pit. From there the solids are separated from the liquids and are pumped into a dump truck. That dump truck takes the solids to the incinerator for disposal.
One of the new odor control measures was to enclose the area where the dump truck receives the solids. The ceiling vents push the air from that room through stainless steel ducts and into the UV system before being discharged outside.
The UV system was designed by a Canadian company called Ambio. According to their website, the Photoionization process starts with forcing the odorous air through a chamber with a strong UV light in it. That process breaks down the odor-causing compounds. After the process is complete, the air coming out of the fans has little to no odor left.
According to Deach, on hot days with no wind during busy cruise ship days, or at times when equipment needs to be serviced, there still could be some odor emanating from the facility, but he says the improvement is impressive.
“Just the past week of running this and testing it a massive improvement. just staggering. Fantastic improvement, walking in here. I won’t say it’s a treat, but it’s much much better,” said Deach.
