SALT LAKE CITY ā Utility workers said Tuesday they had altered their plan to put a 30-foot-tall “biotower” in a west-side neighborhood as neighbors continued to fight the proposed location.
Jason Brown, deputy director of Salt Lake City Public Utilities, said the new plan was to instead install a smaller “biofilter” near 1000 W. Pierpont Ave. to mitigate unpleasant and potentially harmful sewage gases including hydrogen sulfide.
According to Brown, the biofilter would stand 15 feet tall with no chimney and would be roughly 9 feet wide and 20 feet long, or approximately the size of a shipping container.
He said the system would be just as safe without the stack.
“It’s a sealed system from where we connect into the sewer line, and so any air that we’re pulling out of the trunk line will be contained within the pipe, underground,” Brown explained. “It comes out of the ground, goes through the filter, the filter does its work, and it discharges the air. In the case of the fan failing, the air wouldn’t flow, and it’d actually be like a dead-end line and disperse as it normally does.”
Complaints about odors in the neighborhood as well as significant corrosion in the existing infrastructure in the area led the city to the conclusion it needed to install a biofilter, Brown said.
Alex Ward, who has opposed the plan since the beginning over a variety of issues including potential health and property value impacts, said Tuesday afternoon he still was pushing to have the biofilter installed elsewhere.
“This is a system that’s designed for an industrial area,” Ward said. “I mean, the heights of these houses ā they’re about 15 feet to the top of the door once you go up the steps, so you’re putting it right there at about eye-level from your house without the stack. With the stack, it still is a nuisance.”
He said he was delivering a memorandum of legal opposition to the Salt Lake City Council at its scheduled meeting Tuesday night, contending utilities workers should meet a higher legal threshold.
“It should be put at a higher bar for them to prove to the community that this is safe for the community,” Ward said. “It shouldn’t be the burden on us to prove it unsafe, and then they don’t listen at the same time.”
Brown said that utilities workers have been listening, that the change to the biofilter reflects that, and that they plan to continue listening, including at a community open house scheduled Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at 1805 W. 500 South.
He said workers planned to include trees or other features on the property to make the biofilter more visually appealing and quieter.
“Just show up, be willing to ask questions, listen and hopefully we can solve and answer any of those questions that they have,” Brown said. “We’re definitely willing to talk to the community on any of our projects.”
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