Odor threat jeopardizes Dorchester condo plan

It is billed as the crown jewel of Columbia Point, a glittering new seaside neighborhood of luxury condominiums, fine dining, and shopping on a rare available parcel of Boston waterfront, on the shores of Dorchester Bay. But before a shovel is in the ground, developer Corcoran Jennison says the entire $1.5 billion project is in jeopardy, citing an unusual concern: The prospect of horrible smells.

Company officials say an odor-control facility that the state plans to build nearby as part of a mammoth sewer tunnel project will periodically spew a malodorous fog over Dorchester and South Boston, including the upscale development.

Worried about the possible stench, Corcoran Jennison officials have begun spreading the word at media outlets and community meetings this week, saying they want the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority to put the facility underground to mitigate the potential smell.

"It would seem like rotten eggs, like rotten cabbage," said Michael Lannan, vice president of Tech Environmental, a Waltham odor-control consultant hired by Corcoran Jennison to study the potential smell associated with the planned facility.

But the MWRA is vowing to move ahead with construction as planned. The authority, along with state and federal officials and environmental groups, says the facility will produce no smell. Officials assert that the odor-control facility will, in fact, make the air smell better.

It is a fight that has devolved quickly in recent days. The two sides do not seem to agree on the most basic of details, such as the facility's proposed height.

Nevertheless, with Corcoran Jennison sounding the alarm, some people are listening. Columbia Point Associates, a group of businesses including the Boston Globe, got a presentation from Corcoran Jennison yesterday and says it will request more information from the MWRA. Maureen Feeney, the City Council president, said she, too, would like more assurances from the state, and state Senator Jack Hart has also jumped into the fray.

"I'm calling on the MWRA to solve this issue," Hart said, "because the tragedy would be this project would not go forward."

Long before the current debate about odor, the issue in South Boston and Dorchester was pollution. Heavy rains often overwhelm the city's sewer system. With nowhere to go, an overflow of commingled wastewater and storm water dumps directly into the ocean. The waste increases bacteria counts in the water, making it dangerous for swimming, and the city's beaches are inevitably closed.

In an effort to stop that from happening, the state devised what is known as the North Dorchester Bay Combined Sewer Overflow Tunnel. The 2-mile, 17-foot wide tunnel, stretching from South Boston to Dorchester, is designed to accommodate the overflow that has polluted beaches, holding foul water until the system catches up. The water will then be pumped to the Deer Island treatment plant, and gases that have built up will be vented through an odor-control facility.

"This has been the most thoroughly vetted and scrutinized project," said MWRA executive director Fred Laskey. "It's been out in the public domain for 10 years, so that everything that could be thought of, has been thought of. And then, in the 59th minute of the 11th hour, this erupts."

But Corcoran Jennison officials do not believe that the odor-control facility, which is scheduled to be built on their property line next year, is designed to handle the peak loads of hydrogen sulfide, the gas that creates that rotten egg smell, especially after heavy rains.

In one Corcoran Jennison model, Lannan, the company's odor-control specialist, suggested that the stench on the worst days could stretch across South Boston and Dorchester. He delineated the smelliest areas on a map with three circles: red, yellow, and green.

"Inside the red, it would be like a bathroom you'd go into and want to leave," he said. "Inside the yellow, it would be like a bathroom you'd go into and probably continue to do what you needed to do, but you'd want to get out of there as soon as possible. And in the green, it would be like a bathroom."

Lannan recommends several changes, including building the facility underground and replac ing a large above-ground structure with a simple, short ventilation stack. By doing so, Lannan said, the MWRA would improve the aesthetics - a concern of Corcoran Jennison's - but more importantly, eliminate downwash, a phenomenon that occurs when wind traveling above a structure, like a building, redirects a previously rising plume downward toward the ground.

The MWRA's own engineer agrees that downwash exists. But even so, it should not create problems in this case, said Emile Hamwey, director and senior principal of Fay, Spofford & Thorndike. The reason, he said, is that their models suggest the facility will create no smell.

"I know and understand that there's a concern," he said. "We just can't share that concern, because we're satisfied that what's being prepared and what's being built there will do the job that it needs to do."

He said that the average ambient hydrogen sulfide levels that the MWRA is projecting, .44 parts per billion, are well below the guidelines established by the state Department of Environmental Protection, .65 parts per billion. At that level, he said, the hydrogen sulfide would be "borderline undetectable."

Officials at both the DEP and EPA are not concerned about the facility. They say such facilities are standard and effective.

Laskey, the MWRA's executive director, said he never receives complaints about the 13 facilities already operating in the state, including three in Boston.

A combined sewer overflow tunnel, more than three times the size of the one in Boston, recently opened in Providence without any odor control. Several residents who live near odor-control facilities in Boston said they have not noticed smells.

Some environmental advocates have signed off on the Dorchester project. Bruce Berman, a spokesman for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, said his group would never have supported a plan to clean up the water at the expense of air quality. "Think about where we were just a decade ago, when waste was washing up shores, on beaches from Cape Cod to Cape Ann," he said. "And now we're looking at a project that's going to give us as much as 100 swimmable days of summer with no beach closures. We should be proud of this, not worried about it."

Laskey said the MWRA is moving forward. The project must be finished by 2011, under a federal court order.

Until recently, his agency was willing to listen to Corcoran Jennison, he said. Laskey said he asked them if it would split the cost, roughly $3 million, to build the facility underground.

Corcoran Jennison said no.

"Do you know any private company that has been asked by a public agency to pay for a building?" said company spokeswoman Catherine O'Neill. "It's like almost blackmail, don't you think?"

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.