School principals decry overpowering stench from sewage plant near Spanish Town Road

The principals of two Corporate Area schools are raising concern about the persistent stench from a decades-old sewage treatment plant operated by the National Water Commission (NWC) off Spanish Town Road in Kingston.

They say the offensive odour affects the air quality in the school environs and interrupts the teaching and learning process.

“Teachers have to pause when they are teaching and the stench comes up so they have to pause what they are doing. Sometimes they have to put their rags with their alcohol or something over their nostrils, sometimes it's as if they are going to vomit because that’s how it is at times,” Andrea Richards, principal of the Greenwich Primary School said.

Three years ago, NWC told The Gleaner that the state agency had decommissioned the plant and that the site is now a conveyancing point for the sewage to go to the Soapberry Treatment Plant.

“Improving the site is an ongoing process,” former Corporate Public Relations Manager Andrew Canon said at the time.

Richards, who has been at the school for 37 years, said some work was being done on the plant but that “whatever work they are doing has not lessened the stench.”

Concerned about the possible health risk of the persistent odour, Richards said some parents in the community have also opted not to send their children to the school, which decreased the school’s enrolment numbers.

“I would like this situation to be dealt with post haste because it's affecting us here, it’s affecting our health, maybe some of us will not be sick today but in the long run, we will be sick, some of us,” she said. So that we can have a school where we can breathe fresh air because over there, the quality of the air isn’t good, and we breathe it everyday, so I’m asking people in high places, please help us,” she said.

Meanwhile, Marlene Reid, principal of the Caribbean Palms Early Childhood Institution, bemoaned the fact that her students had to get used to the stench.

“It is affecting the school enormously because especially when the smell comes up, we have to be covering our noses, covering our mouths, telling the children not to talk, stuff like that, so they actually have gotten used to it, and it’s really daunting at times to know that children have to be experiencing this,” she said.

- Sashana Small

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