Sewer problems belong to residents

County says it is not to blame for ‘rotten egg’ smell in Sykesville

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007

The Carroll County Bureau of Utilities has determined that a foul smelling sewer gas odor that has plagued a group of homeowners in Sykesville in not a county problem.

The leaking of hydrogen sulfide, a toxic sewer gas that has afflicted several homeowners in the Sykesville neighborhood of Shannon Run, is an issue between homeowners and homebuilders, said Michael Evans, director of Carroll County Public Works.

Over the course of several years, three residents in Shannon Run have complained of a “rotten egg“ smell inside their home. The smell was hydrogen sulfide, a chemical component in sewer gas that accumulates in warm weather, and is toxic in high amounts.

The Carroll County Bureau of Utilities performed a smoke test in 2005 in the home of Richard Buczek on Brandenburg Circle, and most recently in August 2006 at the home of Rachel Morey, also on Brandenburg Circle.

Both tests on Brandenburg Circle indicated internal plumbing problems with the pipes laid by the homebuilders, said Mark Rychwalski, Sykesville Town Council president.

Buczek hasn’t had foul odors in his home for a year, he said, after the smoke test in 2005 detected a poorly filled pipe seam in his basement. The defective pipe seam was an infrastructure problem from the homebuilder, Buczek said. His home was built in 1996.

After the most recent smoke test in the Morey’s home, the county determined the source of the leak to be a defective pipe coming up from her basement slab, Evans said.

Morey said she is hopeful that the problem will be resolved this summer after contractors replace the loose pipe in her basement floor. Morey noted that the gas is undetectable now, but still present until the pipe leak is fixed. In total, the county has performed three tests on the Morey’s home, with only the most recent test indicating a problem, she said.

Morey said she still questions whether there are problems with the main sewer line since she also noticed the smell at the street level over the summer.

The county will continue its program of adding bioxyde into the sewer lines to diminish the production of hydrogen sulfide, Evans said, but no other action will be taken at this time.

“There’s no other action for the county to take,“ Evans said. “We demonstrated that our sewer lines are operating properly.“