For at least the last five years Plattsville farmers Rob Hall and Jim McCartney say they've been quiet about an issue festering to the south of their farms.

They and others east of the village have been in the path of odours emanating from the nearby waste water treatment lagoons operated by Oxford County. Despite being driven indoors by odours from the lagoons they have never complained.

But when Oxford County brought forward plans to upgrade and expand the system in a Class Environmental Assessment Addendum earlier this year, the friends knew they had to respond.

News of the expansion includes plans to raise the berms around one of the lagoon cells to increase sewage capacity. The project immediately raised red flags for the farmers and their neighbours.

"In our minds they're taking a lagoon out and raising the berms," Hall says. "Is it not going to smell more?"

Given only two weeks to respond to the call for public input when they caught wind of the addendum in March, Hall and his wife Cindy decided to enact their rights to stall the project along with Jane and Jim McCartney.

The couples asked for a Part II Order request that requires the Ministry of the Environment to consider the merits of a full Class EA of the project.

A full class environmental assessment would be a costly, in-depth assessment of the lagoons and its operation, rarely enacted by the ministry. The move could hold up development in Plattsville for years.

Now Rob Hall and Jim McCartney are speaking out because they feel the county is portraying them as the people holding up development in the village.

Hall says they simply wanted to have more time to investigate what was going on with the lagoons.

"We started to ask for the information we were entitled to get," he says.

Before the order was issued to the county, Cindy Hall began some investigative legwork that included a Google Maps search of

Plattsville and a satellite capture of the lagoons taken in May 2006.

What that image revealed shocked everyone.

Instead of green pools of placid water dotted by churning, white aerator bubbles, the image shows the pitch-black square of the system's facultative pond and two black aeration cells. The only green water in the system is the east waste stabilization pond.

Hall says a certificate of approval issued to the county by the MOE calls for four surface aeration units in the two aeration cells to be working at all times.

Facultative bacteria live in the ponds to provide anaerobic and aerobic degradation of the waste. Aerators don't have to be operational at all times in order to build up an adequate level of dissolved oxygen in the ponds.

But compared to a satellite shot of the lagoon system in Tavistock, where aerators are churning and the water is green, the difference is dramatic.

Hall says he can prove the date the satellite image was taken based on the details shown at his farm where a corn planter is clearly making the rounds in his field. The date of the satellite image is relevant he says, because a typed MOE inspection of the lagoons completed that same week in May 2006 states the system is being operated in accordance to the county's certificate of approval.

The satellite image does not show the surface aerators in operation. "We could never catch the aerators running," Hall says.

In a 2004 publication created by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and National Research Council, obtained by Jim McCartney, operational guidelines suggest a black lagoon is a clear sign something is wrong.

A table in the document adapted from the US Environmental Protection Agency characterizes lagoon colour as a good indicator of its condition. A dark, sparkling green lagoon indicates good conditions with high pH and dissolved oxygen. Gray to black indicates the pond is "very bad," "septic," and contains "virtually zero DO."

According to the document, proper preventative maintenance includes on-site odour monitoring, watching for visual cues and taking regular samples from the lagoon cells.

McCartney and Hall don't believe a proper monitoring system was in place for Plattsville.

And Hall thinks it's ironic that County of Oxford wastewater supervisor Don Ford is listed in the credits for a publication he believes is the smoking gun against the county.

Once Hall and McCartney had the satellite evidence in hand, they took a walk to the edge of McCartney's land to get a close-up look at the sewage lagoons.

Photographs taken at the shore of one of the cells shows thick clumps of fecal matter and what appear to be condom wrappers sitting on top of a grass-lined pool of black sludge.

Further intrigued with what they saw at the lagoons, the farmers wanted to know what was being discharged.

Hall says effluent from the lagoon system is discharged into the Nith River from the system's polishing cell. Photographs they've taken at the mouth of the discharge pipe, on an adjacent farm property, shows what appears to be blackened water. Hall says a rock splashed with the water below the pipe was stained black from the discharge.

"If it's good effluent, why does it look like this?," he asks, pointing to the photograph.

"You don't do this shit anymore," shouts McCartney. "This is the environment!"

The farmers have since received a letter from the county barring them from trespassing on the lagoon system property.

After uncovering evidence they believe shows a problem with the lagoons, the farmers struggle with the fact they didn't react sooner.

"We just put up with it thinking they're doing the best job they can," McCartney says. "We don't complain. We're farmers. We're used to some smell."

Hall believes that's why there weren't any complaints heard from people down the road in Plattsville, where residents are accustomed to the occasional foul smell in the air when manure spreading season begins.

But the stink the farmers up the road were dealing with was something entirely different.

McCartney says the last five years have been the worst.

Hall thinks the stench was emanating from the lagoons after the supper hour, when people in Plattsville arrived home from work.

Neighbouring farmer Bob Hofstetter says the smell was so bad some nights during the hot summer months he and his wife Joan would have to wake up to close the window. Enjoying an evening on the porch was often out of the question.

"The smell was unbelievable," Hall says. "It was a different smell. Once you got it in your house you couldn't get it out."

In a letter to the county dated May 22, 2008, Hofstetter logged about 10 times and dates the stench wafted onto his property north of the lagoons, starting in mid March of this year. The couple went as far as telling Blandford-Blenheim councillor Jeffrey Glendinning about the problem, thinking some action might be taken at the county level.

Nothing was done until the Part II order was in place.

"Now we know we should have complained," Hall says. "We trusted that the place was being run the way it was supposed to be run. Clearly it wasn't."

Neither men think it's their job to act as watchdogs on a situation that has the potential to affect not only the enjoyment of their properties, but the environment downstream as well.

McCartney, who now keeps a pair of binoculars handy to watch activity at the lagoons from a distance, accuses the county of failing to follow proper monitoring procedures and says their method of following up on odour complaints is having one of the engineers drive down the road with the windows rolled down.

Director of public works Robert Walton e-mailed McCartney outlining plans the county was taking to remedy the odour issue he says was never brought to the county's attention.

Oxford took over the facility in 2002 from the Ontario Clean Water Agency. Walton states that during the time the OCWA was operating the facility there were times when the four aerators were offline and there were no odour complaints. He also refers to the Norwich Wastewater Treatment Plant, a similar sand filtered lagoon system, that does not have mechanical aeration.

Walton also contends in a letter to the couples that their Part II Order request is delaying the county's commitment to implement upgrades that will improve effluent quality and "permanently address odour emissions."

"If a system is run on complaints and not on a certificate of approval where is the trust?," asks Hall. "How can we let these people do an expansion when this hasn't been run right for years?"

Oxford County's manager of wastewater services Shahab Shafai contends the "effluent markers" the county is achieving could not be met if concerns about the system being septic were valid.

"When we are on site we haven't experienced it ourselves," says Shafai, referring to the odour. Since the Part II Order was implemented in March he has met with the farmers and has committed to implementing improvements in the lagoon operations. Short-term improvements to the system include improving aeration in the lagoons, dredging the biosolids from the west cell and draining the east cell to determine if sludge needs to be removed.

"Based on a preliminary look it didn't have too much accumulation," Shafai said.

Both cells will be put back in operation with aerators online, he added.

The long-term picture, which is part of the planned expansion of the lagoons and raising the berm to increase capacity, will include "overall aeration refinements," Shafai said.

"Leave us alone. Let us do the work and if there are still issues, let us know," Shafai said.

"There are checks and balances here."

In response to the Google Earth image touted by Hall and McCartney as proof of the county's negligence, Shafai says there are too many variables to conclude anything from a photograph.

"When someone says it looks unhealthy, I don't know where they're getting this from," Shafai says. "Everybody agreed you can't just look at a picture from a satellite and conclude it's septic. You have to do a little more investigation. Historical data shows the lagoon is not septic."

Shafai confirmed the county relies on neighbours of the lagoon system to report problems, such as odours, as soon as they arise. Phone numbers have been provided to neighbouring property owners, he said.

"Unfortunately people tend to keep quiet for a while and get frustrated."

Shafai emphasized the operational concerns have nothing to do with the county's plans to expand and improve the system, and should not be a reason to hold up the project and delay development in Plattsville.

A call to provincial abatement officer with the Ministry of the Environment Ian Ness-Jack was returned last Friday. But he says the ministry's communication policy prevents him from commenting directly on the situation in Plattsville.

The MOE is still reviewing the Part II order.

McCartney and Hall admit the stink hasn't surfaced since the county implemented their short-term solutions to the problem in the spring.

But they're still frustrated their requests have met with so much resistance. McCartney believes saving money is the real reason behind the county's reluctance to act.

"Why would you not want to have a clean start to use this system," he says. "If they're running this right, it's not a bad system. If this was being run right, according to its licensing with four aerators going, we wouldn't be sitting here."

Rob Hall is just hopeful the Part II order will lead to a solution that will give the farmers the freedom to enjoy their properties and put the county's wastewater service department back on track.

"They're going to do what they have to do," he says. "I just hope they clean it up. Nothing more. I hope to see those aerated cells have a clean start. Then they know they won't have to come back to this."

Lagoon Operation

Risks associated with a lagoon-based wastewater treatment plant according to Optimization of Lagoon Operation: A Best Practice by the National Guide to Sustainable Municipal Infrastructure. © 2004 Federation of Canadian Municipalities and National Research Council

"A lagoon-based wastewater treatment plant can produce a good-quality effluent that will have minimal impact on the environment if properly designed, operated and maintained. This performance can be realized at relatively low cost compared to conventional mechanical treatment systems that have significantly higher energy, maintenance and operational requirements. Conversely, a poorly operated lagoon can create objectionable odours and result in the discharge of poorly treated effluent that can adversely affect the aquatic life in the receiving stream.

As a community served by a lagon-based wastewater treatment system grows or regulatory agencies impose more stringent effluent requirements, it may be necessary to consider upgrading the lagoon to a mechanical treatment plant if improved performance or increased capacity cannot be achieved through optimization approaches or expansion. This will result in significant capital investment and higher operation and maintenance costs for the community."