"I have always lived in this district and I regularly smell bad smells coming from the Ginestous wastewater treatment plant so I am interested in being trained to recognize and report them", confides Geraldine, whose house is located at 3 streets away. Located near the Toulouse ring road (Haute-Garonne) and the Ernest-Wallon stadium, the Ginestous wastewater treatment plant is the largest in the city, treating 160,000 m3 produced by 950,000 inhabitants of the Toulouse metropolis. . While the infrastructure, managed by Eau de Toulouse Métropole, launched a modernization and odor reduction plan in September 2020, it offered volunteer residents the opportunity to become a nose jury to report bad odors through an application.
The largest wastewater treatment plant in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) is located in the Ginestous district.
LP / Julie Rimbert
Two training sessions with Suez facilitators took place on November 24 and 25.
A dive into the recognition of smells to teach these novices to detect if the bad smell smells of ammonia, a fruity scent, pine resin or rotten egg.
After information on the intensity, the discomfort and the nature of the smells, the 17 residents present that evening go on to practical work with a kit to recognize smells.
A first assessment in six months
“I have lived in the neighborhood for several years, I even almost bought a house with my wife, but the fact that it stinks regularly was crippling, says Yves, a forty-something.
We know that the people in charge of the station are making an effort but I was interested in seeing the backstage.
I learned a lot about how the station works and how to recognize smells.
It's not that easy and I'm going to need a little practice.
"
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Thanks to the odor wheel, a small reminder allowing the odor smelled to be associated with a category of odors, future noses will be able to report on their smartphone the malodorous episodes, their intensity, the day, the hour, the duration of the odor disturbance or the level of discomfort.
After an hour of training, the residents visited the wastewater treatment plant in order to associate the odors with a place or a treatment phase.
In six months, Eau de Toulouse Métropole, which has also trained around twenty of its agents in parallel, must once again receive the nose jury in order to make an initial assessment.
