Some are complaining that Hamilton smells — and now the City’s bosses have decided to investigate why.The City yesterday earmarked more than $60,000 to fund studies into its sewage system and to probe the reasons behind unpleasant odours.The Corporation approved out-of-budget funding for a $30,000 study to look into odour complaints on Front Street and a separate $34,245 study on the City’s sewage system.City Engineer Patrick Cooper told the board that the City has received a growing number of complaints about odour in recent years.“With the build-up of new buildings, we have noticed a rise in the number of complaints and we want to do a study on where these events are happening, why they are happening and get some ideas on how to combat it and prevent these odour events that we are having,” he said.He said some of the areas where odours have been reported are the Number Six shed, the cargo docks and Barr’s Bay Park.The sewage study will meanwhile look at how the existing system is coping with the increased load caused by the large number of buildings erected in the last decade.“This is an update of an existing report,” he said. “We had a report done ten years ago on the city line. Since we had the study done, we have had Ace, XL, the new Waterloo House, the building across from Bacardi.“We have had a large number of major projects come online and really this is to see if our sewer is large enough to handle this capacity, and if it isn’t, then what are the remedial measures to take.”He said the issue recently came to the forefront with the announcement of the new marina project at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess.“It’s really giving us a health check on our sewer,” he said.Councillor Troy Symonds that while Corporation has collected around 5,170 gallons of oil from the city’s restaurants to be recycled, he had seen restaurants degreasing their stoves and allowing the waste to run into the storm drains.He was told that the issue was separate from the sewage and odour matters, but that such incidents are a serious problem as the storm drains lead directly into the harbour.Corporation Secretary Ed Benevides said: “We are dealing with the Health Department on that. It is an illegal operation.“The odour study is just on sewage. The matter that members are raising now have been mentioned before. It has been brought up to the Health Department and we are actually meeting with the Chamber [of Commerce] to discuss this along with a number of other topics.”