Talking to the neighbors is the best input you can get. This was going to be my first recommendation, and would be the number 1 factor to consider in my decision if I were in your shoes.
Regarding overflows, the number of times would matter far less to me than what the consequences have been or could be. If you're not downstream from the plant, than an issue at the plant would seem to have difficult directly affecting you. Again, your neighbors have experience on whether or not there has been an impact, and topographic maps may also be of interest. I admittedly tend to have a relatively dismissive attitude about overflows, though, growing up on the west coast where combined sewer overflows were the norm in most cities every time there was heavy rain. This was the pattern for decades. The result was always the same: "Do not swim" warnings for affected water bodies, and a day or two later, everything is back to normal. I dug into the water test results a few times to see if the official story actually checked out, and could see the river coliform levels become only moderately elevated, because the high influx of stormwater into the system diluted everything so much, and then within a day or two, they dropped to normal. I don't recall ever even actually noticing an odor.
West coast cities finally started to address these issues starting roughly in the early 2000's, although that's still a work in progress.
A fully modernized treatment plan can be remarkably clean. There is a major wastewater treatment plant (serving over 1/4 million people) in my area that the neighbors fought against for years, but it had to go somewhere, so they picked a relative low population density area and forced it to happen. As a compromise, they included a fair amount of buffer space and landscaping. The result is the treatment plant grounds is now a popular park. My family visits it periodically. Most people would never guess except from the signs what the buildings on the other side of the parking lot are (no lagoon at this one...the fancy, modern membrane bioreactors are all indoors).
I'd have no qualms moving in next to it.
The other major wastewater treatment plant near me was built in the 60's and has been enlarged since then, as well as upgraded. The main lagoon is huge - around 150 acres. Apparently in the past there were odor problems, but those were largely addressed 15+ years ago. It's directly adjacent to a wildlife refuge that is a popular hiking area. I haven't been by this one much, but I have heard there is occasionally faint odor along the trails closest to the lagoon. Again, modernized treatment plants really seem to seldom be even remotely the sort of concern people tend to understandably expect them to be.
The local compost yards, on the other hand - almost all of them are a routine source of community complaints due to odors, noise, truck traffic, etc.
Regarding overflows, the number of times would matter far less to me than what the consequences have been or could be. If you're not downstream from the plant, than an issue at the plant would seem to have difficult directly affecting you. Again, your neighbors have experience on whether or not there has been an impact, and topographic maps may also be of interest. I admittedly tend to have a relatively dismissive attitude about overflows, though, growing up on the west coast where combined sewer overflows were the norm in most cities every time there was heavy rain. This was the pattern for decades. The result was always the same: "Do not swim" warnings for affected water bodies, and a day or two later, everything is back to normal. I dug into the water test results a few times to see if the official story actually checked out, and could see the river coliform levels become only moderately elevated, because the high influx of stormwater into the system diluted everything so much, and then within a day or two, they dropped to normal. I don't recall ever even actually noticing an odor.
West coast cities finally started to address these issues starting roughly in the early 2000's, although that's still a work in progress.
A fully modernized treatment plan can be remarkably clean. There is a major wastewater treatment plant (serving over 1/4 million people) in my area that the neighbors fought against for years, but it had to go somewhere, so they picked a relative low population density area and forced it to happen. As a compromise, they included a fair amount of buffer space and landscaping. The result is the treatment plant grounds is now a popular park. My family visits it periodically. Most people would never guess except from the signs what the buildings on the other side of the parking lot are (no lagoon at this one...the fancy, modern membrane bioreactors are all indoors).
I'd have no qualms moving in next to it.
The other major wastewater treatment plant near me was built in the 60's and has been enlarged since then, as well as upgraded. The main lagoon is huge - around 150 acres. Apparently in the past there were odor problems, but those were largely addressed 15+ years ago. It's directly adjacent to a wildlife refuge that is a popular hiking area. I haven't been by this one much, but I have heard there is occasionally faint odor along the trails closest to the lagoon. Again, modernized treatment plants really seem to seldom be even remotely the sort of concern people tend to understandably expect them to be.
The local compost yards, on the other hand - almost all of them are a routine source of community complaints due to odors, noise, truck traffic, etc.
Statistics: Posted by iamlucky13 — Thu Oct 03, 2024 8:06 pm — Replies 15 — Views 460