Last week, our Readers’ Reporter column featured a question about a peculiar sewage smell in Valleyview.

A Daily News reader had asked what was causing the unpleasant odour, which she detected at various times all along the business frontage road leading from The Brick to the Shell station.

City officials investigated the area on Dec. 1 but found no trace of the odour or any obvious cause, leading acting utilities manager Chris Jackson to believe the smell was the result of occasional turbulence in the sewer main (created by the pumping of sewage from lift stations in Dallas and Barnhartvale).

That’s when local businessman Pav Gill contacted us via Twitter to weigh in the issue.

“It’s really bad,” said Gill of the odour. “I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled it, but you can’t miss it. Even our guests complain. We actually had a guest the other day saying the smell was coming from one of the other units (in the motel).”

Gill’s family owns two motels on the Valleyview frontage road — the Country View Motor Inn near Burger King and the King’s Motor Inn near Arby’s.

“We’ve noticed (the sewage smell) since 2007 and we’ve complained to the City about it,” said Gill.

“We even spent thousands of dollars changing the entire ventilation system and the exhaust pipes and everything, thinking it was a problem within the building, and there was nothing that was found. And when we addressed this complaint with Public Works they said it’s not a City of Kamloops issue.”

They aren’t the only business to have thrown money at the problem. A worker at Harold’s Restaurant said they recently had a plumbing company in to overhaul their pipes.

Was it a wasted exercise?

Not necessarily.

There are aging buildings with aging plumbing all over the city — and they can present their own host of problems, says Jackson.

Corrosion, grease build-up and dry drainage traps are common offenders.

Still, there’s more to the odour issue in Valleyview than old buildings and pipes.

There’s a City sewer main that runs the length of Valleyview’s business frontage road and in that pipe flows sewage from Valleyview, Dallas and Barnhartvale on its way to the wastewater treatment plant.

Depending on atmospheric pressure and temperature, gases can be released from this flow, the unpleasant odour rising up through the holes in manhole covers.

The City has attempted to plug holes in manhole lids along Valleyview Drive in the past, but the plugs were never meant as a permanent fix because sewers are designed to vent.

“If you trap gases in there, there’s the potential for other things to happen, because sewer gives off methane,” said Jackson.

Valleyview isn’t only neighbourhood having this issue, if that’s any comfort to Valleyview businesses and residents.

It happens throughout Kamloops, depending on the time of year, the sewage flow and the atmospheric pressure.

If you have concerns about sewage odours in your neighbourhood, Jackson said to contact the City’s public works department. They’ll investigate.

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Got a question about Kamloops, or a mystery you need our Readers’ Reporter to troubleshoot? Email your query to litt@kamloopsnews.ca.