Toxic Gases in Kever Benjamin City

The local paper brings a story of professional interest to me. Simtat Avivim St. and the HaShalom neighborhood say they are suffering from strong sewage smell now for the last year and half. The are sueing the Municipality and the Mayor personally. The neighbors have identified a main sewage line that they demand to be eliminated according the TAHAL consultants´s advice. They also demand an H2S gas study, including in the neighborhood Golda school. They say that the strong sewage odor fells people and they are forced to abandon their homes. The Municipality contracted an environment consultant, El-Chem, which submitted its report on October 2007. They found three points where H2S is over the permitted concentration in the air, one of them in the Gold school's sports hall.The municipality announced that Golda will be closed down, but instead it installed an air purifier in the nearby pumping station and Golda operated as always. The neighbors took a lawyer, Guy Ofir, who tried advance the cause. In December 2007, Giddeon Mazor, from the Ministry of Environment, started to demand some action from part of the Municipality. The Municipality maintains that there is no sewage odor at all, it must all in the imagination of the Kever Benjamin's inhabitants.

שתי תושבות המקום, הגרות בסמוך לבית הספר, הגיעו למיון לאחר שחשו ברע. ''סבלתי מכאבי ראש, קוצר נשימה, בחילות והקאות, סחרחורת וכמעט אובדן הכרה וכך גם בתי הגרה איתי. פנינו למוקד חירום ואובחנו אצלנו תסמינים של פגיעה חמורה'' תושבי מתחם בית הספר ''גולדה'', ברחוב השלום, במרכז העיר, פנו השבוע לעירייה באמצעות עו''ד גיא אופיר, בדרישה לפתור מיידית את בעיית הגז (מימן גופריתי) הנודף ככל הנראה מהביוב בבית הספר.

The Engineer's two cents: A new sewage pumping station started working a year and half ago near gas station on the Old Haifa Road. Each time the pumps start working, they push the sewage to through the main line toward the city's highest topographic point and from there, the sewage flow by gravitational force to the wastewater treatment plant in the Pecan Neighborhood (which is not in Kever Benjamin's area). Golda school and the neighbors affected by the smell area, what a coincidence, located exactly in the hilltop and there must be there some pressure reducing or air valve accessory on the main line. I have no time to look into the situation, but a tall aireation chimney and an efficient air purification system may be helpful. The Municipality's problem is that its right hand does not know what its left hand is doing, and contracted TAHAL and an unknown environmental consultant, who may be unaware of how the system works. Balasha-Yalon Consultants from Haifa have been Kever Benjamin's sewage engineers in the last fifty years.