SAN JOSE (KRON) — Some days are worse than others, but people who work and live in one North San Jose neighborhood want to know–what is that awful smell?

So, KRON4 sent Rob Fladeboe out there to do some nosing around.

The smell is unmistakably the smell of raw sewage. It wasn’t too bad on Friday, but it was unbearable last weekend during the recent heat wave.

It hasn’t curbed his appetite for one of Suzie’s Hot Dogs just yet, but truck driver Alan Haugh says when he passes by the intersection of North First and Trimble, he rolls up the windows every time.

“It stinks,” Haugh said. “Right now, it’s not too bad, but it’s worse on sunny days, real bad.”

On their way to lunch, these folks said the smell sometimes finds its way to their desks inside office buildings.

“Sometimes when they turn on the air conditioning, it can make for an interesting experience,” tech worker Eddie Tan said.

The smell, most definitely raw sewage, is strongest near storm drains.

It’s coming from a convergence of four large underground pipes that carry raw sewage to the city’s waste water treatment plant and it’s not a new problem.

“Oh yeah, it’s been happening for years, especially in the summer,” tech worker Clarissa Benavente said. “It’s unbearable.”

Some sections of the underground pipe are 100 years old, made of brick, and may be settling, impeding flow at times.

The city is replacing, rehabilitating, and inspecting those pipes, and the system needs ventilation to function properly.

But on hot days when the air is stagnant, restaurant worker Albert Bolden says “it’s very bad. I smell it at work. It’s a hazard to the public.”

What smells like sewage to some is the smell of money to others as the city has increased the system’s capacity to accommodate growth and development there.

Those pipes now carry wastewater from more than a million people.

Back at the hot dog stand, owner Suzi Gaa says the sewage smell is no worse than that coming from the Newby Island Landfill or from the nearby bay itself.

“It’s been coming and going for years,” Gaa said. “I live in Alviso, and we get that same smell….It gets worse when it’s hot for several days in a row.”

The city’s deputy public works director uses the analogy of high and low tide to describe what’s happening.

In the morning, when thousands of people are taking showers and flushing toilets, the system is more active and so is the fragrance wafting up into the atmosphere.

It tends to settle down during the day and then comes back again in the evening.WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON:

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