What causes the smell? Is it a sewer smell or something else? Can it be fixed or are we stuck with the smell?
The smell next to the skybridge on certain days causes people to avoid outside of the C wing and courtyard and take the A wing all the way to the D wing due to the smell. Students are wondering if it can be fixed if they will have to continue smelling it.
“Every time I walk past the skybridge I smell the dirty, stinky, sewage smell. It goes into my nose and hurts my brain affecting my learning and my real-life functions like focusing, ” said Pasco High senior Christian Garcia when asked his opinion about the smell.
I find this harsh because if this is how one person reacts, I can imagine how everyone else’s reaction is and how it affects them and their learning and if the other schools around us take the smell better or worse or if the smell affects people in their daily lives.
Pasco High School principal Veronica Machado was asked about the smell.
“It’s a pump that’s connected to the city which the school collects and the pump will push it out. So yes, the smell is noticeable when you are walking sometimes, not all the time,” she said. “From what our custodian said they’ve already checked it out before and the system is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and all the things coming from the bathrooms go into one location and it fills there and once it fills there it’s pumped into the city.”
This feedback is important for students to understand because she also has to deal with it and she probably had the same questions, especially as people are asking her the same questions.
Pasco High head custodian Oscar Montano gave an explanation about smell.
“It’s a lift station sewer, so it comes into the holding tank and then goes into the lift station where there are two pumps. Then when it goes to a certain level, there are sensors and when it goes to the pump which sends it out to the sewer system in the street. But there’s always water in there, which is why there’s the smell until it gets detected by the sensor and gets flushed. It can’t be sealed because it has gasses.”
This knowledge can be helpful for students who wonder about the smell next to the skybridge. Hopefully in the future they can possibly get a new system so other students at Pasco High won’t have to deal with the smell.
