What Was That Smell in the Air?
If you stepped out the door to a stinky smell in the air this morning, you weren't the only one experiencing it.
People reported noticing the odor in the air from the Lake Erie shore to Union City, Wattsburg to Millcreek Township.
It was not hard to find people who smelled the smell and were willing to describe it.
Lynne Brown who lives in Millcreek near the Erie Zoo said, "I went out to get the newspaper and it smelled like sewage."
Darcy Loringer said, "I live on West 9th Street, and when I went out my back door, I did smell a very strong smell. "
Brian Orton on the job pushing grocery carts in a local grocery store said he smelled it the day before. "To me it smelled like rotten eggs or something, it smelled really bad. I don't know where it was coming from."
We called the Erie County Health Department to see if they knew what disrupted the air quality.
Health officials were aware of the complaints and were working with with other agencies to find the source.
They referred us to the NW Regional Office of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
DEP spokesman Tom Decker said their office received a couple of complaints about a smell over the weekend too, one from West 12th Street, another from Presque Isle.
Decker said investigators will check in with the Erie Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Lakeview Landfill to see if they experienced any issues that could have contributed to the odor in the air, and they'll be talking with people who made the complaints.
They hope to know more in a day, but say because of wind patterns it's not always easy to track a problem like this down.