Black Hawk County addresses sewage smells outside of jail

Black Hawk County Jail

WATERLOO — After the smell of sewage assaulted the noses of workers in the Black Hawk County Jail, officials are looking at preventing future foul odors.

Rory Geving, superintendent of maintenance, and the Consolidated Communication Center Director Judy Flores came to the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to address the issue.

Geving said the smell was predominantly in the lower level where consolidated communications and maintenance staff work. He said there were no reports from inmates about the stench.

Geving

“We did have employees that were having breathing difficulties and several that had headaches,” Flores said. “(The odor) was so strong they were nauseous and, to be blunt about it, it was like working in an outhouse situation. … It was pretty horrendous.”

Geving said they could smell the stench starting last Tuesday morning and it dissipated throughout the day but returned during the morning hours of Wednesday.

He said he met with the city of Waterloo’s waste management supervisor who went through the jail’s system and couldn’t find any breaches in the lines. He said once they closed down the air dampeners, which can bring outside smells in, the odor diminished.

This isn’t the first time the jail has dealt with the noxious odor.

Geving said in early 2022, the county did an extensive piping project which replaced several hundred feet of sewer pipes. With the jail being built in 1992, he said gasses from three decades worth of sewage started to eat at the upper side of the piping, causing breaches.

“We made the decision to replace those sections,” he said. “Rather than being reactive to each situation, let’s be proactive.”

He described the jail as a small city with more than 200 inmates – where each cell has its own toilet – as well as many employees.

“It really bothers me that we have employees working in these conditions, even if it’s not constant,” Supervisor Dan Trelka said. “The board needs to be aware of it and we need to identify the problem and fix the problem. … We may have to allocate funding to fix the problem, whatever it is.”

Geving said his crew are looking at an American Rescue Plan Act project request for upgrading the HVAC systems in not just the jail but the courthouse and Pinecrest building as well. The upgrade would primarily be for a new control system that would manage air intake and the volume of air being sent to a particular area. He said $3.15 million of ARPA money has been allocated to HVAC updates to focus on air quality improvements in those three buildings.

As for now, an air scrubber has been placed in the consolidated communications center which can help remove offensive odors. There are also hydrogen sulfide detectors to see if the parts per million of the gas reached a concerning point for people’s health. He said there wasn’t an alert but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an odor in the building.

The new systems wouldn’t just filter out sewage smells but all odors coming from the outside such as fumes from cars and the smell of cut grass.

Tama County authorities are investigating an explosion that killed one person and destroyed a house in rural Buckingham, Iowa, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.

Tama County authorities are investigating an explosion that killed one person and destroyed a house in rural Buckingham, Iowa, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.

Tama County authorities are investigating an explosion that killed one person and destroyed a house in rural Buckingham, Iowa, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.

Tama County authorities are investigating an explosion that killed one person and destroyed a house in rural Buckingham, Iowa, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.

Tama County authorities investigated an explosion that killed one person and destroyed a house in rural Buckingham on Aug. 14.

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