Something smells. It's Louisville's neighborhoods, and the poorer ones don't get relief

This story has been updated to reflect a new location of the 6 p.m. Tuesday public meeting: California Community Center, 1600 St Catherine St.

Louisville stinks.

At least that’s what thousands of callers have told authorities in the last six years.

The odor complaints were throughout the city and came in at a rate of nearly three a day, Courier Journal found in a review of public records.

Those records reveal some surprising sources of unwelcome smells — even a barbecue smoker in an East End subdivision. And there are some that won't shock anyone: The Butchertown business that slaughters 10,000 hogs a day; a western Louisville cluster of chemical plants; and sewage facilities, well, pretty much all over.

Courier Journal's investigation also found uneven enforcement by the city’s odor police, the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.

As a result, long-simmering questions of environmental justice are re-emerging in the mostly minority neighborhoods often downwind from Rubbertown, including MSD's Morris Forman sewage treatment plant, Kentucky's largest.

"Some of it is economics," said Annie Haigler, a Park DuValle resident who lives about a half mile from Rubbertown and describes odors at her home as often unbearable. "Some of it is race," she added. "Some of it is a combination of economics and race."

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The air district, for example, cracked down with six-figure fines on the JBS Swift meatpacking plant in Butchertown, which is sandwiched between the popular NuLu entertainment district and trendy Clifton and Crescent Hill. However, it has all but left Rubbertown chemical plants and MSD untouched by penalties, despite repeated complaints aimed at them and neighbors' concerns that the stench inflicts stress, misery and maybe even illness.

Demographics of the two areas are like mirror opposites.

About 72 percent of people living within 3 miles of Rubbertown are African American, with 24 percent white, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nearly the opposite demographics can be found near the JBS Swift site: 71 percent white and 24 percent African-American.

And West End neighborhoods have at least three times as many families living in poverty, city records show.

This shows locations of most of the odor complaints confirmed by the Louisville Air Pollution Control District from 2012 through 2017. Areas showing red had the most complaints.

Whatever it is, Haigler, a board member of the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, said she and others feel marginalized and want more odor action from the air district in the West End. The task force has been working on environmental justice issues for more than two decades.

"I've lived in the West End all my life," said 36-year-old Mariel Gardner, also of Park DuValle. "I've always smelled something, even when I was a child growing up in the '80s and '90s. I just thought that is how Louisville smelled."

Sometimes, she said, "there's a sewery smell. Sometimes a putrid, stomach-turning smell. It kind of takes you back when you come outside. It hits you so hard."

For their part, air district officials are acknowledging they've missed the mark on Rubbertown odors. And they said they are making administration changes that should put more focus on them and other odor complaints around the city.

"I don't think we have dealt with the odors in Rubbertown sufficiently by any means," said Matt King, who oversees compliance and enforcement for the district. "They are a significant issue and we need to address them a little better. We've heard from lots of citizens and we have seen it for ourselves."

He agreed neighborhoods near the Rubbertown industrial area have legitimate environmental justice concerns. Some of those, he said, are beyond the district's authority, such as zoning.

But in the district's defense, he observed that Louisville officials have devoted a lot of attention over many years to reducing the most toxic air emissions from Rubbertown facilities through the 2005 Strategic Toxic Air Reduction program.

That program has been credited with sharply cutting back the riskiest chemical emissions from Rubbertown and other industrial plants across Louisville, some of which have odors even if at very low thresholds.

No after hours response

For its investigation, Courier Journal obtained under the Kentucky Open Records law odor complaints from two sources — the air district and the sewer district.

The complaint calls to MSD — nearly 4,000 — were scattered across Louisville and were typically associated with sewage pumping stations, treatment plants or catch basins in the street. Catch basins have traps and during warm, dry weather, water in them can evaporate allowing sewer gases to escape.

Because the two agencies provided information in different formats, the complaints could not be compiled and mapped together.

The air district's information was incomplete; officials there withheld addresses of the people who complained but identified the suspected sources of some of the complaints.

MSD received more than 3,900 odor complaints from 2012 through 2017. Shown above, Courier Journal calculated complaints per 1,000 residents for each census tract in Jefferson County.

Combined with those identified sources, Courier Journal was able to estimate an odor location from caller's description in all but about 13 percent of the complaints that the district had confirmed as being smelly.

The district's records show its staff was only able to confirm odors in about 45 percent of the complaints it received. And a third of the time, calls about odors came in after work hours — evenings or weekends, so there was no staff available to go out and sniff.

That's a major source of frustration, said Eboni Cochran with the group Rubbertown Emergency Action, which has been pressing for faster responses. "Those of us who call in don't get a sufficient response," she said. "At this point, people don't think there is ever going to be any help."

Metro Councilwoman Jessica Green, who also lives near Rubbertown, said the district needs "a better reporting mechanism" and "somebody who works around the clock, even on weekends."

District officials said they don't need to smell every odor. They can follow up with companies the next workday. "But as long as staffing allows, we want to get staff out there," King said.

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Bardstown Road sewer complaints

Even with some limitations on the records provided to Courier Journal, the more than 6,000 reports to both agencies provided an odiferous snapshot of life in Louisville, an old industrial city with an old sewer system and a landfill in the middle.

Proving that odor, like beauty, is in the nostrils of the beholder, the records contained a surprise or two. For instance, there was that trailer-sized barbeque smoker that caused a stink in the Foxboro subdivision, near Hurstbourne Parkway and Dorsey Lane.

Louisville is a bourbon town and there were a few complaints about alcohol vapors, dubbed the angel's share by distillery companies but deemed overwhelming by some Louisvillians.

Bardstown Road in the Highlands has also received a share of odor complaints — mostly from the sewers.

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"Every now and then we'll get it," said William Dean, co-owner of William Dean's Salon.

But he added that "there are a lot of competing smells in the Highlands. We've also got lots of fried chicken, Indian food, Chinese food, and very spicy stuff all around here."

In 2015, the district blamed a musty odor that prompted dozens of widely scattered complaints — one person said it smelled like dirty feet — across central Louisville on a chemical in the soil that may have been made worse by wet, muddy conditions.

Even a coffee roaster got crossways with air pollution inspectors after someone complained about odors that "smelled like burnt popcorn."

The district fined John Conti Coffee $1,125 in 2015.

In fact, that was one of only 11 companies to be fined for odors since 2012 even though the district logged about 2,400 complaints over the six years.

Cochran said: "Low fines are not going to change behavior."

Tom Nord, the spokesman for the air district, responded: "Our first goal is compliance and we believe we are making progress on a lot of these issues."

JBS hog plant complaints drop

The top company to be fined since 2012 for odors was JBS. The company's 1,100 union workers turn hogs into bacon and other cuts and they also operate a rendering process that sends vapors into the air.

JBS paid the district $118,500 last year for alleged objectionable odors dating back several years, following a pressure campaign from a lawyered-up Butchertown Neighborhood Association that fought the company over zoning, odor and other issues.

One caller still smelled the plant in early 2017 a mile away at Waterfront Park.

"It was a lovely evening last night," the caller said. "Unfortunately, the wind was from the south and the JBS Swift plant was once again layering Waterfront Park and the Kentucky side of the Big Four Bridge in its unmistakable stench."

But complaints attributed by the air district to JBS dropped from about 100 in 2016 to about 40 through mid-November last year, the records show.

"We certainly appreciate the efforts and the steps they are taking to manage the odor issue," said Nick Johnson, the president of the Butchertown Neighborhood Association, striking a more conciliatory tone from the past. "We continue to hold them to account and engage them to be the best neighbors they can be."

In addition to the fine, the company was also put on a corrective action plan, required by the air district.

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Pete Charboneau, the plant's general manager, said the company has been upgrading scrubbers and changing how they operate to reduce odors, among other steps. They are getting independent odor audits with recommendations for improvement. Misters spray an odor neutralizer along the property's fenceline.

And the hog barn is covered and has air filters.

"It shows we can co-exist," Charboneau said, adding that it seems the company's relationship with its neighbors has changed. "It was all through lawyers before. Now it's through handshakes."

By comparison, the only Rubbertown company to be fined for odors was Zeon, which makes rubber products such as automobile hoses and gaskets. The district fined it $1,500 in 2015 for three incidences dating back two years.

Once in 2014, the district traced odors back from a residential area to Zeon's Bells Lane plant, describing them as "intense and obnoxious for the entire hours I was there. I had a headache by the time I left."

King said Rubbertown odors are more complex than in Butchertown.

There, the complaints and air district action show that a single facility has stood out as the main problem. In and around Rubbertown, there are many potential odor sources, including but not limited to the nine chemical plants and MSD that participate in the Rubbertown Community Advisory Council.

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That industry-backed group holds monthly meetings between chemical plant representatives and community members.

"We are currently discussing the best ways to address odor concerns ... including odors that do not originate from RCAC member companies," said Cheryl Fisher, the group's facilitator. "We are working cooperatively with APCD to develop communication strategies in the Rubbertown area."

She said the member companies continue to work to reduce their emissions "and seek to communicate with the community to resolve concerns."

Still, it's not just people who live near the plants who object. A worker at a nearby petroleum storage yard in October called the district to report "a strong plastic odor" so strong he said he couldn't breathe. He said it was the worst he'd experienced in nine years.

"Duly noted," the air district records said.

MSD to launch odor patrol

From the air district reports, odor hotspots can be seen near Rubbertown, JBS, the Outer Loop Landfill and the LG&E's Cane Run power plant, which had rotten egg smelling odor issues with a coal ash operation that has since been shut down.

LG&E paid odor fines of $40,500 in 2013 and 2014, the second most only to JBS since 2012.

Waste Management of Kentucky, operators of the Outer Loop Landfill, was next with $7,125 in odor fines during the past six years after being cited for odors district officials attributed to methane collection and composting in 2008 and 2013.

MSD is a current focus of the district even though it hasn't issued any fines against the public sewer agency recently. Of the odor sources the air district identified, MSD was responsible for at least 6 percent, and most of them were the Morris Forman plant at 4522 Algonquin Parkway. That's on top of the nearly 4,000 odor complaints MSD received covering all its facilities.

One caller to the air district complained that it smelled "like a bathroom outside," and said he could not sit on his porch. Another said their whole house smelled like rotten eggs, an odor commonly associated with sewage treatment.

King said MSD is treated "a little differently" because it's a public agency and not a for-profit business. MSD also has budget problems that were making improvements at Morris Forman more difficult, King said.

Fines are still an option, he said, adding: "We've had a pretty good relationship (with MSD)," he said. "That's a better approach at the current time."

MSD operations chief Brian Bingham said MSD has been feeling pressure from the air district even though it's not been fined. "They expect significant improvements, quickly," he said.

MSD has spent $40 million in Morris Forman improvements since 2015 including swapping out 1970s odor-control equipment, Bingham said. This summer, MSD will dedicate a crew to taking the stink out of thousands of catch basins across Louisville when they dry up during summer months, he said. The agency is also testing out a new system of linking odor reports to localized wind and weather conditions to help sleuth out whether odor complaints are from the Morris Forman plant or another facility.

From an odor perspective, "our goal is that the community doesn't know we are there," Bingham said.

'I shouldn't have to move'

By the air district's own admission, however, odors are not its top priority. That would be making sure Louisville complies with federal clean-air rules and its own toxic air reduction program, which officials said were matters of greater public health concern.

Yet King said the district is reorganizing part of its operation to be more responsive, and Rubbertown-area complaints will be getting more attention.

Putting a new supervisor in charge of "community compliance" matters like odor, dust and smoke should help focus more attention on odors across the community, King said.

But he also said it's not possible to get rid of all the city's odors.

The district has regulated odors since at least 1972 and it's objective is clearly worded: Essentially banning the emission or any substance that creates an objectionable odor beyond the person’s property line. It defines objectionable as having caused a nuisance or annoyance to the public.

That rule creates expectations that can't be met, King said, but he also said district officials aren't recommending weakening it.

"I am asking for help," he said. "I don't have a clear path to an inodorous city. I also don't think Louisville is anybody's top stinker of a city."

That depends on where you live, said Haigler.

On a recent sunny day when an odor resembling nail polish wafted through on a breeze, she wondered if the problem is that too many people have just become accustomed to the odors.

She said she knows she could move away but doesn't want to.

"I love this city," she said. "I chose to live in the West End. I love this complex. I love my home and I love my neighbors. I shouldn't have to move."

James Bruggers: 502-582-4645; jbruggers@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @jbruggers; Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/jamesb. Reporter Caitlin McGlade contributed to this report.