City Council candidates debate what to do about persistent stench in south Wichita
It’s not that often that City Council candidates will admit their district stinks.
But council member Jared Cerullo and challenger Mike Hoheisel agreed with a questioner at a forum last week that their southeast Wichita district “stinks bad and a lot,” from two treatment plants that process nine-tenths of the city’s sewage
“You’re absolutely right. If you’re going outside — on a humid day especially — in south Wichita, we all know the odors,” said Hoheisel, the clubhouse leader in the Nov. 2 election campaign after taking first place in the August primary.
“There’s a game that’s played on the South Broadway corridor: ‘Guess that smell,’” Hoheisel added. “It’s not simply just the sewage plant, there’s also things about stagnant water in the ditch (Gypsum Creek and the Big Slough drainage channel) and just recently there was a terrible odor throughout south Wichita which was a jet-fuel spill out at McConnell Air Force Base.”
Cerullo, appointed earlier this year to replace the scandal-plagued former council member James Clendenin, also agreed that south Wichita is frequently and unpleasantly aromatic and that needs to change if the area is ever to catch up with the rest of the city.
He said the main problem is there are two sewage plants in the district handling 90 percent of Wichita’s wastewater — Plant 1 on the south side of I-135, between K-15 and Hydraulic, and Plant 2 on the southeast side of 57th South and Hydraulic.
“Thank you for that question,” said Cerullo, who lives a quarter-mile from one of the sewage treatment plants. “I’ve identified that as one of my top issues for south Wichita as to why people don’t want to move to south Wichita, why development doesn’t want to come to south Wichita, because it stinks. That’s the truth. It stinks.”
The candidates offered differing plans for ridding the south side of its persistent and pungent stench of human waste.
Cerullo wants to borrow $335 million in state and federal low-interest loans to rebuild the plants for odor control. He said the money could be at least partially paid back with operational savings.
“Right now, they fix it with throwing chemicals on it, which is very expensive and will never end that cost,” he said.
Hoheisel said he agreed with Cerullo that the city needs to invest in stench reduction, although he said said he’s not sure that Cerullo’s plan is the best.
“The thing is the seals around the chambers need to be redone,” he said. “I agree with Jared here about actually needing to invest in this. I’m not sure about the debt number. I’d like to see those numbers before I would get too far into that, because right now, 25% of the city’s budget is debt payment, so that’s a little concerning.”
Hoheisel said that there are things that could be done in the short term to alleviate the problem.
“There’s also different chemicals that you can use in order to break the waste down a little better,” he said. “You can make sure you ventilate it in the middle of the night as opposed to 8 o’clock in the morning when everybody’s getting up to go to work.”
