The Great Stench, 2026 (or, how history helps me cope)

In a minute, I'm going to talk at length about poop. But before we get to that special treat, some reminders:

My contribution is a 30-minute Zoom session (where I will not talk about poop unless you want me to) and a six-month subscription to the Bonus Content section of my Patreon, which gets you a) e-arcs of all my new releases b) your name in the acknowledgements and c) exclusive bonus content every month. The total package value is $190 and at the time of writing it's sitting with one bid at $20, so that's a bargain in the making!

  • It is your nearly last chance to grab a copy of Romantasy Rebels: 26 fantasy romance tales of standing up and pushing back. Run, don't walk. This anthology ceases to exist on March 1st.
  • It is your not quite nearly last chance to get the first Olympus Inc. collection on super special - $3.99 for Persephone in Bloom, Aphrodite Unbound, Hera Takes Charge and Penelope Pops the Question. It's going back to $9.99 on March 15th, unless I forget, in which case it'll be a few days later.
You get the first three for seriously so cheap, plus a novelette you probably already have, but together.

Right. Poop.

Whenever I'm having a bad time with modern horrors (pandemics, technocrat billionaires, misogynistic chodes on social media) I like to get historical (the Great Plague, feudal monarchies, women as literal chattels). Not to reassure myself that it's comparatively not that bad, because, I mean, it's pretty fucking bad, but as evidence that even in horrendous times, people as a whole can get to something better.

My neighborhood in Christchurch, New Zealand, is currently contending with the Bromley Stench, a nauseating odour that permeates the environment off and on, especially in wet summers. It originated in 2021, when two filters at a wastewater treatment plant caught fire and then just kind of sat there for a while, marinading in their own degradation. The plant was remediated, but ever since, the plant and all the surrounding area have had episodes of gruesome stink and we're in one now. The aroma is described as "foul", "putrid" and "rancid" by sober journalists not given to exaggeration. They are correct.

How bad is it? The first time I ever noticed the odour I thought there was a sewage leak. I cooked cabbage last week, and took a big grateful sniff. Farts are unnoticeable. Wet dogs may roam unreprimanded. Cat litter takes perilously longer to reach the "FINE I'll clean it" stage. The green waste bin still smells worse, but only if I put my face right in it. The stench is bad enough that occasionally it's woken me in the night. I can't dry clothes outside, and we're having such weather for line drying!

And I am not even in the worst zone, where the smell can actually affect your health.

Friends, I have gone through so many candles this summer! Be it known: I am a middle-aged woman who likes a little treat, and I had a lot of little treat candles, and they are running out, a catastrophe hitherto never imagined. This affects my emergency preparedness! How am I supposed to see (and also enjoy vanilla sandalwood) if there's a power cut at night? 1

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this

Like many urban environmental fuck-ups, this one has been exacerbated by the apparent reluctance of The Powers That Be to either do anything about it or competently communicate what might be done. A new activated sludge reactor is being commissioned in 2028, which is supposed to stop the odor. The programme will take three years (estimated). Again, the fire was in 2021.

The mayor apologised in 2023 for the shortcomings and failures of the city council. We still have the same mayor, and the stench is back, baby. His solution is to... hm... figure out an early warning system for the smell getting worse.

Karen, you say doubtfully, this is a very modern problem, yes? A wastewater treatment failure that creates a literally sickening stench, made worse in times of extreme weather? How can you find solace in the past?

Why, it's time to read up on the Great Stink of London, 1858! This was way worse, largely because London's rapidly expanding population were 1) pooping more 2) increasingly using fancy flush toilets connected to sewers and 3) flushing those sewers directly into the Thames.

The contaminated river stank to high heaven, and had for decades. Moreover, whenever the sewer lines leaked near wells or water pumps, cholera and typhoid fever resulted. Cholera was especially feared--it hit hard and spread quickly, and has an untreated infected mortality rate of 50-60%. 2 People at the time mostly thought that "miasma", including foul odours, was responsible for making them sick (and it certainly wouldn't have made them feel great) but the real culprit was all those fun bacteria that swim around in human faeces.

At first, the political response was "something must be done; but who is responsible?" They argued about that for a while. Then came the summer of 1858–hot, dry, and destined to make the situation worse. The Thames water level decreased, but its poop levels didn't. Raw effluent collected on the river's banks, where it sat and stank.

And Parliament was finally moved to act. By concern for their constituents? By an increasing understanding of the importance of public health? By sheer embarrassment for the part where their capital city's major waterway was a vast open sewer?

Yeah, those were factors, but I think one salient motivator was the part where the Thames flows right past the Houses of Parliament.

RIGHT past. (Photo credit: Pedro Szekely)

The most powerful politicians in the country were going to work everyday in the stankiest conditions possible. The curtains of the Parliament building were being soaàked in lime chloride--they were trying to smother the stench rolling off the river with the smell of chlorine. Chlorine was the better option.

It didn't work. Parts of the building became totally unbearable. The Prime Minister fled a committee meeting. There was some discussion of moving the seat of Parliament. But instead they formed a Select Committee, produced an Act of Parliament, extended the authority of the Metropolitan Board of Works to the purification of the River Thames and got shit done.

Now, the Bromley Stench is not a raw sewage on the river bank problem (although, were I living in Wellington...). But it is an ongoing public health issue, made worse by the weather and the fumbling of the people that can do something about it, and I cannot help being a little historically minded about the problem.

And the solution.

Thus, a modest proposal: I invite Mayor Mauger and his esteemed colleagues on the Christchurch City Council to move their offices to Bromley. Let them work right next door to the damaged plant, in this lovely weather, like the Parliamentarians of 1858. Let every public meeting, every private discussion, every meet-and-greet with dignitaries now take place in the suburbs they have neglected, with the stench they have failed to address.

If it is truly impossible to work any faster on fixing the problem, well, okay--at least we know our leaders suffer alongside us.

But I have a feeling that closer proximity might just speed things up.

Failing that, at least pay for my candles. The good ones don't come cheap.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might enjoy it.

1 The actual answer is "stumble a few metres to the meticulously prepared go-bag you keep in your bedroom and find the torch in the outside pocket, you goober." But still.

2 The seventh cholera pandemic has been ongoing since 1961. It kills 21 000 to 143 000 people each year.