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By Jonathan MacPhee
The stench has never been pigeon-holed. Indescribable, unpeggable, not of this Earth -- the Summersider unfortunate enough to fall privy to its pungency knows not how to label it. The odour gets worse every year. Each annum's foray into the summer months finds the much-reviled Summerside harbour yet more deplorable, pushing the aromatic limits of each man, woman and child to new putrid heights. Along the odourous tract of pavement dubbed Water Street West, one will forget internal policing disputes altogether. Korey Reeves lounges in his office at the Summerside Atlantic Fitness Centre and points out the window to the Water Street harbour, to which he has a front-row view -- and smell. "I suppose there are customers who don't come in on certain days because the stench is too much for them," admits Reeves, who's been an employee at the AFC for three years. "You get comments from people coming in all the time about it." He picks up a letter on the corner of his desk from Environment Minister Mitch Murphy. "Our landlord wrote a letter to him concerning it, because he wants something done about (the smell). It's driving his property values way down. In fact, if you look at most of the houses around here in the west end, it really shows. There aren't any really nice houses around here." Reeves rattles off the contents of Murphy's letter -- something about the seaweed in the harbour as the culprit and the city's plans to build a land-locked salt water pond to negate the problem. Fellow employee Tanya Loder sidles into the room and interrupts him. "I almost threw up here the other morning," she exasperates. "And when you get inside, it's no better -- it doesn't go away. It's like it's stuck to the walls or something. I heard that they're going to go ahead and fix it for sure." "They" being Summerside city councillor Brent Gallant and his advisory committee, which held a meeting with the environment minister two weeks ago regarding how to attack the harbour. Reeves, skeptical of how long this course of action will take, says it's more progress than he's seen to date. "They're taking the steps that need to be taken. You can't ask more than that. You can't force the wheels of government to turn any faster." Meanwhile, further up Water Street at the epicentre of the nauseating scent, local businessman Mike Warren is much less optimistic. His electronics store has absorbed the worst of what the harbour has to offer for over six years. He is aware of how harmful the smell can be to a potential business. "Yeah, there have been times when I've had to say, 'I just can't do business like this. This is ridiculous and I'm going home for the day,'" he says. Warren says tourists have displayed their distaste concerning the harbour. He holds no stock in Gallant's -- or any other politician's -- attempts to curb the odour. "I have no reason to get excited about this. They haven't done anything about (the smell) in 30 years, so why should I get excited about it now?" Warren asks. "Yeah, I had (a politician) come down and talk to me about it the other day. Now, if I see him take a shovel and go start digging up the harbour himself, then he'll get my vote."
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