For Some, Tucson Framed By a Combo of Foul Smells: Dump, Sewage Plant Create Indelible Nostril Memories

By Josh Brodesky, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Nov. 24–When the sweet scent of sewage seeps into his car, Matthew J. Adams knows he is back home.

The wafting aroma from the Roger Road sewage plant announces the Old Pueblo like a billboard for the nose: Welcome to Tucson.

“Even if you have your windows rolled up, you still smell it,” said Adams, who moved to Phoenix from Tucson about a year ago.

While the Roger Road Wastewater Treatment Plant — housed on the curiously named Sweetwater Drive — is Tucson’s biggest olfactory offender, it is certainly not its only culprit.

On the southeast side of Interstate 10 is Los Reales Landfill, welcoming drivers with stench and stray trash. The two serve as bookends, of sorts, for drivers passing through town on our busiest interstate.

And the smell isn’t isolated to either end of I-10. In recent weeks, some residents have noticed a distinctly disagreeable odor near South Park Avenue and the interstate, although officials have said the smell should be muted soon.

In Sahuarita, residents there have complained about a certain foulness emanating from dry beds, where solid waste is left under the sun before eventually being scraped up and shipped to Los Reales.

And while some Tucsonans might not think much of these monuments to waste, visitors, particularly our neighbors in the valley, have taken notice.

“They call it ‘the litter box’ due to the fact that it stinks when you drive through Tucson,” said Adams, describing some of the comments Phoenix residents have made to him about the smell. “Of course, these are people that don’t frequent Tucson a lot.”

City and Pima County officials said they are aware of the smelly stigma, but, for the most part, they dismiss it as typical Tucson-Phoenix trash talk.

“I have heard it from Phoenicians,” City Manager Mike Hein said. “I had given a talk at the public policy school at ASU, and someone pointed out that when they come to town, they think of wastewater.”

They didn’t quite say Tucson stinks quite so delicately.

“The joke used to be you knew you were coming into Tucson from Phoenix because of the smell,” County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said.

The county has taken steps to clear the air, and complaints about the plant are down, but to really address the problem, he said, the Roger Road plant will have to be replaced, which will cost at least $500 million.

For perspective, Huckelberry offered a sensory history of the plant, which was built in 1951.

“Twenty years ago it was much worse,” he said. “Thirty years ago it could get really ripe.”

Across town at Los Reales Landfill, the smell, although strong, is not as pungent. But the trash is an eyesore.

For Jonetta Holt, who until recently lived a few miles from the landfill, the loose trash and debris were a blight.

“It’s a nuisance. It’s a health hazard, and, visually, it’s depressing to have to drive through that,” she said.

Those who drive in from the southeast are met with a wall of plastic bags that get trapped against the landfill’s fence.

“It’s a white wall,” she said of the fence on windy days.

And for residents who live near the landfill there is also plenty of stray trash that comes from either wildcat dumping or uncovered loads being brought to the dump.

The city does its best to pick up the loose trash, deodorizes the landfill and has landscaped it to blend with the environment, said Nancy Petersen, deputy director for environmental services.

But the loose trash is “a real problem,” she said “The wind catches it and blows it up before we can even bury it.”

Not surprisingly, those promoting business and tourism in the Old Pueblo didn’t think much of the fact that the city’s main gateways are marked by a landfill and particularly stinky sewer plant.

“It sounds like a really negative story,” said Kimberly Schmitz, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Our goal is to promote Tucson as a destination for visitors and meetings. … People come to Tucson for the authenticity of the Southwestern experience.”

Maybe so, but it still doesn’t mean people don’t hold their breath when they hit town.

“I have had a couple people say that to me,” State Rep. Jonathan Paton said about Tucson’s malodorous reputation. “I think the people who have said that to me, I think their opinions have been formed by the freeway and does not, in any way, reflect my community.

“A lot of opinions in general about Tucson, for better or for worse, are formed by travel along I-10.”

The Roger Road Wastewater Treatment Plant has a capacity of 41 million gallons of sewage a day, and the nearby Ina Road facility can handle up to 37.5 million gallons a day. Eventually the Ina Road plant will be expanded to handle 50 million gallons a day and the Roger Road plant will be replaced.

By 2030, it’s estimated the sewer system for the greater Tucson area will need to be able to handle up to 85 million gallons of sewage a day.

All told, the Pima County sewer system is made up of more than 3,300 miles of pipe.

–Contact reporter Josh Brodesky at 807-7789 or jbrodesky@azstarnet.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

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