Orange County Sanitation District’s Proactive Strategies for Preventing Odor Complaints

Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) is a public agency that provides wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal services for approximately 2.6 million people in 479-square-mile dense populated area in Southern California. Treatment of wastewater is inherently an odorous process, and to combat the persistent odors, OCSD has implemented several operational and process improvements using a combination of innovative and well-established odor control strategies to reduce public odor complaints. These efforts have resulted in a considerable decrease of odor complaints attributed to OCSD’s treatment facilities and collection system. This paper illustrates the comprehensive approach implemented to reduce odor complaints and presents a summary of proactive tasks and steps that were taken to meet the Agency’s goal. Furthermore, it sheds light on the challenges that the odor control team faced during this attempt.