City says solution to rotten egg smell in NE Calgary in the works, but won’t be done until 2027

The Calgary Airport Authority says people in northeast Calgary should finally get a break in a couple of years from a bad odour coming from the airport each spring.

It involves a pond where de-icing fluid drains to and gets worse when the ice melts.

Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal brought up the concern at Tuesday’s council meeting, saying residents in Falconridge, Martindale, and Castleridge were told a couple of years ago something was in the works, but they still get the rotten egg type smell each year.

“The de-icing fluid — in anarobic conditions, it basically lets off an egg smell so that’s the scientific explanation,” said Airport Authority president and CEO, Chris Dinsdale. “In the spring right now, when there’s a day that’s little wind in the spring, that’s when you have these odours.

He says fixing the issue comes will a pricetag of $8 million, but they have started the work.

“There is work now to make sure we can flush it out and that work has started. Now, of course, when you flush it out in the spring, you’re disturbing it, so you’re temporarily making the smell worse. It’s something that’s well-known, the solution is well-known, and right now the first parts of that have started,” Dinsdale explained.

But, Dinsdale says it wouldn’t be until 2027 that the project is complete and the odour eliminated.