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Mono keeps close eye on sewage odour emanating from Fieldstone wastewater plant

November 20, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER

Mono residents in the Fieldstone subdivision have had enough of foul smells from a wastewater treatment facility.

And they want the municipality to do something about it.

Residents of Mono’s Fieldstone subdivision brought concerns about worsening sewage odour from the French Drive wastewater plant to council during a Nov. 12 meeting.

It’s a concern that’s been brought to Mono council before.

The subdivision is about 337 homes and garnered as many as 243 signatures on a petition that was circulated for just a week, said resident Diana Farrugia in the petition’s preamble.

A contingent of Fieldstone subdivision residents attended Mono council’s Nov. 12 meeting.

“It’s very serious,” Farrugia said. “It’s at the point where we need some action. We’ve waited patiently.”

The odour engulfs the neighbourhood, regardless of the wind’s direction or the time of the year. She said residents can’t open their windows or enjoy their outdoor spaces, especially in the evenings and early in the morning.

“The smell has become a defining characteristic of the neighbourhood, making it difficult to enjoy our properties, host guests, or even take pride in our homes,” the petition reads. “Beyond quality of life, this ongoing issue is now directly devaluing our homes.”

The petition continues, “Prospective buyers immediately notice the odour when visiting the community, making it extremely difficult for homeowners to sell their properties at fair market value.”

Farrugia said in the petition that Fieldstone residents pay a separate monthly fee for the operation and maintenance of the wastewater treatment plant. That’s in addition to regular property taxes.

“We were told that once the subdivision was assumed by the Town of Mono, these additional fees would be eliminated,” she wrote. “However, more than 10 years have passed, the subdivision still has not been assumed, and these monthly fees continue to increase significantly despite the worsening condition of the plant.”

At the council meeting, she said a number of residents have voiced their concerns to the municipality.

Deputy Mayor Fred Nix said he’s quite sympathetic to the Fieldstone residents’ plight.

“I don’t blame you for asking us to do something,” he said. “But what keeps going around in my mind is we don’t own the facility. What legally can we do?”

Further, Nix said the town won’t take ownership of the treatment plant until problems have been remedied and it’s working correctly.

“I don’t understand why it’s not working, but I don’t know what powers we have to tell them either make it work or do something to stop the odour,” Nix said.

Brookfield Residential was the subdivision’s builder and is the treatment plant’s owner.

Councillor Melinda Davie asked if the petition signatories are subdivision residents, and whether there are any homes in that area that are unaffected by the stench, where the wind doesn’t blow.

Farrugia said it has taken little effort to drum up support for the petition.

“It’s more word of mouth,” she said.

Davie asked Farrugia about the information she’d received when she bought her property.

“Did you know that it was water that was separate from the Town of Mono’s larger population and also that the water treatment is sperate?” Davie asked.

“It’s not the whole town’s water. When we take over it, it’s not that everybody in the town is going to pay for it. There is a responsibility of those people who own those houses,” she added.

Farrugia said she’d asked neighbours about smells from the treatment facility before she moved into the Fieldstone area.

“They said no,” she said.

“I think it’s shameful that you’re having to live through this,” Coun. Elaine Capes said, adding that it’s the builder’s responsibility to address the problem.

Capes suggested holding a community town hall so the developer could speak directly to concerned residents.

Mike Dunmore, the town’s CAO, said the plant that was provided as part of a subdivision agreement failed to meet the specifications developers said it would.

A pair of rotating bacterial chambers at the facility failed, he said.

“The developer was and is still obligated to fix those,” Dunmore said.

The water that exits those chambers goes into an eight-acre septic bed. Dunmore said the effluent leaving the site was not within the Ministry of Environment’s parameters.

Further equipment failures followed, and problems with sourcing parts contributed.

“But the plant was never meeting the effluent quality which is our environmental protection site underground,” Dunmore said. “There’s an opportunity at that point to start to look at how to increase the efficiency of the effluent quality to satisfy the ministry standards.”

He said repairing equipment, such as at the water treatment plant, isn’t a simple task. The municipality received engineers’ reports from Brookfield Residential that detail how to rectify the plant.

The town is reviewing the report and has hired a waste specialist and engineers to investigate what’s necessary to bring the facility up to standards.

“The town is frustrated as well,” he said. “Prematurely assuming this plant is not in the best interest of the town.”

“Clearly, the plant is not working,” Mayor John Creelman said.

Creelman suggested that something beyond bacterial chambers and septic bed failures has occurred at the site for this problem to persist for three years. He said the town is committed to having the plant repaired without taxpayers footing the bill.

“We want the developer to pay for that,” he said. “We want the developer to do it and pay for it. And we have various ways of forcing that.

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