
The city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, made an enormous effort to clean up its water bodies by eliminating the discharge points in the city as well as the collection and treatment of 100% of the produced wastewater. However, these improvements brought unexpected consequences in the production of gases and the generation of offensive odors from the wastewater collection, treatment and final disposal system.
This problem has forced Cartagena to define and develop a strategy that under a continuous improvement scheme has allowed diagnosing scenarios according to the particularities of the territory, evaluating alternatives, verifying the effectiveness of the interventions carried out from different fronts and, based on this, carrying out the pertinent adjustments focused on preventing, controlling and mitigating the generation and emission of offensive odors.