Outraged Richmond residents attend emergency meeting over stench linked to 2 facilities
RICHMOND – The City of Richmond called a special council meeting on Tuesday night to discuss some of the odor issues residents have complained about since last week.
One Richmond resident described the stench in his neighborhood like sticking one's nose in a sewer pipe. The city is trying to get some answers about the recent bad smells.
Richmond neighborhoods have been dealing with several air quality issues. At the end of November, flaring at the Chevron refinery put a cloud of black smoke over the city.
Last week neighbors complained about foul odors near both the refinery and the city's waste water treatment plant.
Tuesday's emergency meeting by the city council was specifically about the bad smell at the waste water plant.
"It smells like raw sewage, even to the extent that when we leave the neighborhood sometimes our clothes, the sewage smell is clinging to our clothes," says Philip Rosenthal. He's lived in Point Richmond for more than 30 years.
Rosenthal's home is less than a mile from the city of Richmond's waste water treatment plant and about the same distance from the Chevron refinery. He says both create some strange smells from time to time.
"It's actually not that uncommon. Last week was a particularly bad set of events," he told CBS News Bay Area.
Starting late in the evening on Monday December 4th, residents reported smelling an overwhelming scent of raw sewage and rotten eggs - something the Bay Area Air Quality Management District traced back to the waste water treatment plant.
The plant is owned by the city of Richmond but run by Veolia Water as part of a multi-million dollar a year contract.
"They failed to communicate with the city to even let us know what was happening," said first-term councilmember Cesar Zepeda. He represents the district around the plant and says there needs to be a more robust notification system for residents when anything abnormal happens - whether at the treatment plant or nearby oil refineries.
Zepeda said he and other city representatives started reaching out to Veolia on Monday night asking for answers about the smell, but didn't hear back from anyone for a day and a half. He says that's why he called the special council meeting to demand answers from Veolia.
"We are going to escalate this as far as we need to, to make sure that the community gets those responses and accountability. At the end of the day it really is accountability," says Zepeda.
According to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the wastewater treatment plant released above normal levels of hydrogen sulfide last Monday and Tuesday during an upgrade to the equipment. BAAQMD issued a notice of violation due to the smell.
A couple of days later, Chevron was hit with a similar notice of violation due to a strong odor residents said smelled like burning tires. It happened on Friday and was also at a waste water treatment facility, but this is one run and owned by Chevron on their property.
The issues were not related, but residents like Rosenthal say it's not fair that residents are constantly being bombarded due to seemingly endless mishaps.
"I think this is a moment in time where people are seeing how we are constantly assaulted," he said.
Representatives from Veolia attended the council meeting to answer questions about the most recent incident as well as plans moving forward to improve operations at the plant. According to Zepeda, Chevron will also be asked next to answer questions about their operations due to the recent incidents.
Meanwhile, representatives from Chevron said the rubber tire smell came from a bioreactor at the waste water treatment plant and was not in any way related to the flaring from a few weeks ago.