DAPHNE, Ala. — There’s a foul smell near Bayside Academy at the end of Dryer Avenue, and the odor has been there for more than a year.

However, a Daphne Utilities official says it can’t legally solve the problem on its own.

Rob McElroy, the utility’s general manager, was adamant that the company cannot remediate the situation without Bayside Academy’s help.

“Bayside added on to their facility. They did a good thing,” McElroy said. “It just kind of backfired on them.”

When Bayside Academy added two buildings in the west parking lot at the end of Dryer, a building along the slope was built with the knowledge that gravity would take water sewage down to Daphne Utilities’ lift station, said Douglas Bailey of the Daphne engineering firm Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch, LLC.

However, the second building, nearest to the bay and located farthest west, does not produce enough water consistently to transfer sewage to Daphne Utilities’ lift station, Bailey said.

“They built an oversized tank, which can hold a lot,” said McElroy. “The tank receives waste water and pumps that into the city’s sewer. However, it needs to reach a certain level to trigger the pump to pump it out. Right now, there’s just a little bit of flow, and you need to get to a certain level before it pumps out.”

The Bayside building is not producing enough sewage to reach a certain level in its tank, which is located on Bayside property, McElroy said. This causes the water to turn septic by the time it is sent to the city’s tank, causing the tank to smell.

Bayside Academy’s administrator, however, said the school has met requirements and should not be blamed.

“I am not an engineer; I am an educator,” said Tom Johnson, the school’s headmaster. “We keep water, at our expense, running in our building. We do everything the city requires us to do, and in many cases more, when it comes to the safety of our kids and the residents of our neighborhoods. Basically, this is an engineering problem.”

The smell is much worse on weekends, when the school property is not in use and there are no flushing toilets or running water, McElroy said.

“It doesn’t take much of that at septic condition to smell bad,” Bailey said.

There are solutions to the problem.

Daphne Utilities has an odorizer, which works like a deodorant, to attempt to filter out the smell.

“(The smell) comes and goes. It hasn’t been constant,” District 2 Councilwoman Cathy Barnette said. “I know Daphne Utilities put in a new cap and filter, so we will see if that works.” Bayside Academy is located in Barnette’s district.

This is only a temporary solution, and the long-term solution comes on Bayside’s end, McElroy said. According to McElroy, a running water hose putting water in the tank would consistently raise the sewage level to the appropriate height to turn on the pump to send sewage to the city’s tank.

“It would only cost them $1 to $2 per month to send water down there through a hose,” McElroy said. “It’s a mechanical issue that has a low-cost Band-Aid.”

The school’s administration hopes the utility’s air filter will solve the problem; Barnette said she hopes it has.

“I don’t have the expertise to solve the problem like that, but I thought the filter would take care of it” Johnson said. “We installed (the pump) the way the contractors and engineers told us to. I thought the problem was solved.”

“I guess time will tell whether or not it’s working,” Barnette said.

“If it doesn’t work we will just have to try the next option.”