Despite complaints, wastewater plant finds no issues

On Thanksgiving night last month, residents along the southern coast of Wantagh and Seaford surrounding Cedar Creek Park may have smelled something other than turkey. Numerous residents took to Facebook and posted in various community groups about a possible foul odor lingering in the air. Some pointed the possible source to be nearby Cedar Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, located in Cedar Creek Park in Wantagh, which has received complaints for malodorous stenches emanating from the building as recent as late 2019.

Lauren Sternberg, Communications Manager at Suez Water, which holds the contract to operate the facility through 2035, confirmed that the company received numerous complaints in the days following Thanksgiving.

“We did receive complaints for ‘nuisance odors’ that are not harmful and the complaints arrived mostly on Thanksgiving weekend,” Sternberg said. “We take these complaints very seriously.”

Sternberg said that Suez supervisors at the plant scoured the building for any tanks that could possibly have been left uncovered for too long. She contends that, after supervisors used devices to read the levels of gasses in the air, they could not determine definitively that the odors were caused by any errors made in the plant.

“I drove to the addresses of [community members who complained] to see what the readings were there,” Sternberg said. “They showed different concentrations of gas, but they all came back very low.”

She also claims that not one worker at the plant reported any excess levels of odors. Sternberg herself drove to the address of a Seaford resident that filed a complaint, and said by the time she had gotten there, she took a reading but “didn’t smell any odor.”

“I very much understand foul odors are unpleasant,” she said. “But the general manager, officers have all walked the plant. We opened up the effluent channels and there was no buildup.”

Last year, in response to many of the complaints posed by Wantagh and Seaford residents, the plant imposed the NOSE (No Odors for Suez Environments) system. Many of the plant’s doors were equipped with sensors that trigger an alarm if left open too long. Sternberg said that no alarms were triggered during Thanksgiving week that would relate to a breach of odors.