Chicago stinks. I say that not as a fan of another city, but rather because the city literally smells bad. One resident said this week they checked their shoes multiple times, “thinking [they] had stepped on shit because of the smells.” Unsurprisingly, the resident found nothing under their shoes.
“It’s like a small sewage smell.” That’s how some residents described the smell in some parts of the city on the r/Chicago subreddit last week. Others said it “smelled like shit” or “fishy.” The story was first reported by local outlet Block Club Chicago.
The most memorable description, at least in my opinion, mentioned a ghost.
“I smelled eggs all yesterday and I thought for sure a ghost was farting in my face last night,” a user said in a comment.
It’s not just you. Chicago officials want the public to know it’s not just you. Representatives from the Chicago Department of Water Management told Block Club Chicago that the smell is related to the sewer system and the lack of rain. This is because most of the city uses a combined sewer system, officials said, which means that both sewage water and rainwater travel in the same pipes on their way to get purified and deposited back into the water supply.
Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the department, told Block Club Chicago that when there’s less rain, it means there’s a higher concentration of sewer water in the system. As such, it’s only natural for the stench of sewage to permeate through the city. She added that there’s currently not enough rainwater to dilute the sewer water and make it flow faster through the pipes.
“That’s how it works. It’s pretty simple,” Vidis said. “We get these calls every year when it hasn’t rained for a while.”
Chicago is currently experiencing dry conditions that are warmer than usual for this time of year. To date, it’s only received 3% of its normal September rainfall, CBS News reported.
Other sources behind the stench. We can’t pin all of Chicago’s bad smells on the sewer system, though. According to Block Club Chicago, rainwater also helps wash the streets, which may be contaminated with dog urine or other substances with unpleasant odors. Furthermore, in the past, stockyard workers would dump animal carcasses into the creek.
“It’s way cleaner than it used to be,” Christopher Haite, an engineer who previously worked at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, told the outlet. “But again, as that area dries out, you can get some more smells there.”
Chicago isn’t the only city with odor problems. Carson, a city in California just minutes away from Los Angeles, faced a similar problem in 2021, though the issue there was more severe. For weeks, Carson residents were forced to breathe in “sewer gas,” another name for hydrogen sulfide, which was caused by decaying vegetation in the local channel due to the drought. Some residents took to calling it: “the stench of death.”
A local protestor at that time summed up the situation succinctly: “What the funk?”
Problems with the sewer gas became so extreme that some residents started getting sick, and health authorities recommended avoiding strenuous outdoor activities throughout the day to avoid exposure. In the end, city officials had to spray a biodegradable odor neutralizer in the area to turn the hydrogen sulfide into a salt.
Images | Mariano Mantel | Steven Taylor
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