LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Catch basins are all over the city of Louisville. They're on the curb, at the edge of the street, and collect rain water to flush out the sewers. Changing weather patterns result in less rain, dryer pipes and smellier streets.
That smell is hydrogen sulfide. It has the aroma of rotten eggs. The CDC associates it with a few health problems.
"I think it's affecting my health tremendously," Quintella Pulliam said. Her bedroom window is near one of the catch basins in the Chickasaw neighborhood. After 52 years of living around the area, it's hard for her to find fresh air now.
"The stink is so bad, it's making me have a lot of sinus infections," she said. "I get a lot of headaches. I know I'm old, but I'm sick much more than I used to be."
Neighbor Rhonda Frazier-Jackson gets the headaches too.
"I think it's worse here," she said. "I like to go walking here in the mornings. And then some mornings, it's so strong I can't even walk outside to get exercise. That's when I realize it's bad."
Frazier-Jackson said she made calls to MSD and Councilwoman Donna Purvis, but they went unanswered.
Paula Boyd can't ignore it either. She lives between Frazier-Jackson and Pulliam.
"You can smell it coming up out of your drains," she said. "Sometimes, at four o'clock in the morning, it wakes you up."
Pulliam brought her own concerns directly to MSD at a press conference held by Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins.
"We've identified the hotspot areas in west Louisville," said MSD's executive director, Tony Parrott. At the meeting, he announced catch basin maintenance projects across several west end neighborhood's, including Pulliam's.
Those basins, he said, are the primary culprit for the issue.
"About 10% of them are not trapped," Parrott explained. "Or they do not have the ability to have a water gap that would keep odors from emitting from those catch basins, so that's a big challenge for us."
Parrott said MSD is short-staffed in the face of so many odor complaints. They're working seven days a week to address short-term issues, but his focus is on improving existing sewer infrastructure for the long-term.
To report sewer odor directly to MSD, call (502)-540-6000. Any other smells or pollution is handled by the Air Pollution Control District (APCD). Their number is (502)-574-6000.
They also have an online reporting form and encourage people to submit complaints through Metro311 or the Smell My City app.
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