You get used to it, Tom Neitzel insists. But after watching him scoop up a shovel-full of semi-processed sewage, I'm not so sure. I stick my hand into the brown-black sludge. It feels like wet cardboard, slimy and a little spongy. And though the smell doesn't assault your nose like a men's room in an I-75 truckstop, it's still strong enough to make you gag. But probably the worst part is neither the touch nor the smell. The worst part is realizing yesterday's breakfast at Denny's could be slopping around here with 65,000 other people's Taco Bell skitters. Because no matter how much they process, clean, chlorinate and compact it, at the end of the day, it's still shit.
There are few city operations as complicated, or seemingly disgusting, as turning a population's excrement into reusable water. The treatment process is constantly evolving, melding technology with decades-old chemistry lessons to clean our wastewater efficiently and reduce citizens' main complaint — the pungent smell.
For the last 46 years, Clearwater's Marshall Street Wastewater Plant has been trying to find that balance.
On this morning, as black clouds crawl over the city, John Milligan, Clearwater's Water Pollution Control superintendent, takes me into the plant's control room, which looks like the set of a cheap 1970s sci-fi TV show. In reality, it contains millions of dollars of equipment that can manipulate any aspect of the 10-square-mile plant. As Milligan describes the "Bardenpho" process — a treatment method that removes harmful nitrates and phosphates from wastewater without the use of chemicals — I'm put off by his choice of words. He describes the raw sewage coming in as "food," the syrupy sludge making its way through the plant as "liquor" and the final clear water as "drink" (even though it is not potable). This must be some cruel treatment-plant joke.
Milligan introduces me to Neitzel, who's the plant's lead operator. A lanky 48-year-old dressed casually in a tan shirt and jeans, he knows his sewage. For 21 years, he's worked his way up from an entry-level operator working late nights cleaning algae-covered basins to the more administrative position he holds today.
Our first stop is the influent pump station — a silo-like building where the raw sewage of 65,000 Clearwater residents first enters. I try not to inhale the thick and putrid stench, which smells like the equivalent of 1,000 overflowing toilets.
"Anything you can think of that people flush down the toilet, they do," Neitzel says. A jagged-toothed metal grate catches everything coming up from the pipes that's not a semi-liquid: toilet paper, sand and the occasional set of dentures.
"The teeth is probably the worst thing I've had to pull out," Neitzel says. One of his fellow operators once found a $100 bill.
From this first building, the feculent makes its way to several tanks of black and bubbly water so any "solids" can settle to the bottom. We walk on platforms above the tanks of sewage like two characters from Waterworld. Several seagulls sit on beams and pick at the scum forming on top. A deep scent of rotting eggs — sulphur — permeates the area. After reaching a certain level, the solids are pumped to another large, silo-like building called the digester (another food reference!) where it sits for 30 to 40 days until properly thickened. (Neitzel denies my request to see the digester.)
From the digester, the thick dreck is pumped to a warehouse where it is compacted, slopped onto a conveyer belt and dropped into large dump trucks to be taken to a landfill outside of town.
"Chocolate ice cream will never be the same, right?" Neitzel quips.
It's inside that warehouse where Neitzel picks up a shovel and digs up a big pile of the compacted sewage for me.
"All the air here is treated and released so it doesn't go into the atmosphere," he says. "We try and control the odors as much as we can."
Neitzel and Milligan say odor control has been a top priority in recent years. While it smells like low tide around the plant most of the time, if a breeze changes, neighborhoods can expect a strong whiff of rotting eggs.
"It's still noticeable," Milligan admits, "and the idea is to make sure it's not."
Milligan says the Marshall Street facility is due for a completely new odor control system by the end of the year that should all but eliminate the stench. Of course, that doesn't help those who work at the plant.
"Some of the stuff, if it gets on you, takes a couple days to get it off," Neitzel says, gravely serious. "It's not a fun smell."
Though there are showers on premises, Neitzel says most workers choose to just go home, or to their favorite watering hole.
"You go to a smoky bar and they aren't going to be able to tell," he says. "We're all a bunch of oddballs anyway for working in shit."
Neitzel says while his friends razz him occasionally for working at the plant, he always has a wisecrack ready.
"Sometimes, when eating out, someone will say, 'This tastes like shit,'" he shares. "I'll say, 'What? Is it too salty?'"
After most of the solids are removed, the sewage goes into fermentation basins that allow the water to release phosphates. Then the putrid liquid, now more brown than black, goes to aerated tanks where bacteria eat the added oxygen, releasing nitrogen into the air.
"If the plant is working well, this is a good smell," Neitzel says, hanging over one of the tanks and breathing in the earthy, slightly sweet aroma.
Depending on the chemistry of the water at this point, it may go back to any one of the basins to further remove phosphates or nitrogen by adjusting oxygen levels.
Once levels are balanced, the water is pumped to the final settling tanks, huge pools that constantly circulate the water and remove any solid material still left in the "drink." The water in these tanks is perfectly clear, but not yet clean. It still must be filtered for sand, chlorinated in tanks to kill bacteria, and then de-chlorinated.
Now the water, completely odorless, is ready to be released into Stevenson's Creek, which runs alongside the plant, or pumped to a storage tank for irrigation purposes, up to 1.3 million gallons a day.
Neitzel beams when we finish our tour; he's genuinely proud of turning putrid black sludge into clear water. We both inhale deeply.
Ah, the odorless smell of success.
YOUR NOSE KNOWS
Not all of Tampa Bay's odors carry the same, um, impact as the ones that linger about a wastewater plant. What smells do you associate most with the region? Sweet or nasty, give us a few scents at senses@creativeloafing.com.
Urban Explorer's Handbook 2007
Sensory Overload Edition
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This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2007.
