{"id":14686,"date":"2014-02-07T14:27:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=14686"},"modified":"2014-02-07T14:27:47","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:27:47","slug":"ottawa-asks-whats-that-smell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2014\/02\/07\/ottawa-asks-whats-that-smell\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa asks: “What’s that smell?!”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Sandra Cuffe<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday afternoon I was driving on Fisher Avenue near the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa when my car filled with a strange odor. I wondered if my radiator might be boiling over, because what else would smell that much so quickly? Part of me thought it kinda smelled like natural gas, but I dismissed that as improbable. After all, I was in a vehicle, driving down the middle of the road, not really near any source of such a thing. I went back to thinking it was my own car, but presently the smell passed and I stopped worrying about it.<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out it was<\/em> the smell associated with natural gas – and PLENTY of people, across Ottawa and even across the river, got to wonder and worry on Thursday. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Buildings were evacuated and the fire department received more than 230 calls as an odour of rotten eggs spread through the air in Ottawa and into Gatineau Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The suspected source of the stink turned out to be pretty simple: Enbridge Gas Distribution was conducting a \u201ccontrolled venting\u201d as it prepared a new 19-kilometre, 60-centimetre pipeline in southwest Ottawa, and wind carried the stench of a natural gas additive farther than expected.<\/p>\n

While \u201ckey stakeholders\u201d near the venting were told about the possibility of smelly air, according to Enbridge, farther-flung regions were caught off-guard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This CBC account<\/a> includes some of the Tweets of evacuated places and frustrated people, including staff and students at Algonquin College, who had to evacuate as a safety precaution.\u00a0Here’s the company’s response<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Enbridge Gas Distribution apologizes for the pervasive smell of natural gas on Thursday Feb. 6 in the Ottawa and Gatineau areas, and regrets the inconvenience this has caused residents and businesses.<\/p>\n

Enbridge was venting natural gas as part of routine pipeline construction. Controlled venting of natural gas is a standard practice for pipeline construction, maintenance and repair. This work was being conducted to safely energize a new 19-kilometre, 24-inch natural gas pipeline in the City of Ottawa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon I was driving on Fisher Avenue near the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,14409,884,5638,14410,6622,1124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14686"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14798,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686\/revisions\/14798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}