Smell something bad in Detroit? Call this number

Bee Davis did what many Detroiters would do after catching a whiff of rotten eggs outside her front door in late March: She called DTE Energy to report a gas leak.

Weeks later, the source of the smell remains unknown, even though it has sparked at least two waves of complaints from residents of East English Village, her eastside neighborhood.

Utility crews visited the area and confirmed that the smell wasn’t a gas leak. But state investigators haven’t been able to track down the source, partly because they heard about the problem hours after the fact.

Davis, like many of her neighbors, didn’t know that she could also report the smell to a state hotline: “If you smell gas, isn’t DTE who you’re supposed to call?”

The answer to that question is a definitive “yes” — gas leaks can be dangerous and DTE will investigate them promptly.

But if the problem is anything besides natural gas, DTE typically won’t get to the bottom of the mystery.

Jeff Korniski, who oversees state air quality inspections in Detroit, just might.

Korniski has worked for decades investigating air quality complaints in Detroit for the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). He said that if residents smell gas fumes or other odors that may indicate a potential health hazard, it can’t hurt to make two calls: one to DTE, and one to his team.

The sooner you call in an odor complaint, the better.

“If we receive the complaint contemporaneously when the smell is occurring, we’ll try to send someone out to observe it while it’s going on,” Korniski said.

If a few hours pass, the smell could dissipate, leaving behind nothing but neighborhood conjecture.

The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s Pollution Emergency Alerting System Hotline is staffed 24/7 and takes odor complaints. Dial 800-292-4706 .

People call the hotline with environmental problems ranging from air pollution to chemical spills. EGLE staffers route callers to the division that handles the relevant issue. If that’s air quality, staffers will decide whether the smell could be coming from a commercial operation. (EGLE only has the power to act on odors from industrial sources.)

You can also directly reach Jeff Korniski, assistant district supervisor for the EGLE Air Quality Division’s Detroit District, during business hours by calling 313-456-4681 .

“Especially in the case of odors, people describe things differently,” Korniski said. “What might be a chemical odor to someone might be a natural gas odor to someone else.”

EGLE can fine a company that emits a sufficiently disturbing odor into the surrounding community, or push the company to change its practices — but only if investigators like Korniski smell it firsthand. EGLE’s seven full-time inspectors in Detroit receive training on scent detection, which is reinforced by consistent practice identifying specific scents of different industries. (Odor investigations are not just about the type of odor, but its strength, frequency and duration.)

Jill Greenberg, EGLE spokesperson, said the agency hasn’t been able to find an industrial source of repeated odor complaints on the city’s eastside in recent weeks.

“You smell something, call us,” she urged. “We drive to the neighborhoods. We get out of our cars. We sniff it.”

EGLE has operated its pollution emergency hotline since 1987. Over the last decade, it received an annual average of more than five calls per day, according to state data. Of the more than 64,629 calls to the hotline since it opened, at least 4,054 reportedly had to do with “odor.” Last year, 62% of complaints to the hotline led to on-site investigations .

DTE spokesperson Dana Blankenship St. Coeur confirmed that the company has responded to two rounds of complaints about a gas smell on the eastside without finding a leak. She encouraged residents to call DTE right away if they suspect a natural gas leak, though she said calling EGLE too is a good idea. She added that DTE typically contacts EGLE when they’re called about odors that don’t turn out to be gas leaks — though the company is not required to do so.

Tracking the scent

That’s exactly what happened — if a little belatedly — when Bee Davis smelled gas around 9 a.m. March 27.

Some of her neighbors took to the social networking site Nextdoor to blame the odor on Aevitas Specialty Services Corp., a company that recycles oils used in car manufacturing. Its facility on Lycaste Street is about three miles from East English Village.

Early that afternoon, EGLE fielded calls about the smell from the East English Village area, and an inspector stopped by Aevitas to take a whiff. They didn’t smell anything.

“For us to generate an odor that would travel a mile or even three or four miles, that’s hard for me to picture,” Aevitas CEO Rob Slater told Outlier Media this month.

If the problem was Aevitas or one of its industrial neighbors, such as Stellantis’ Jefferson North plant , complaint calls would typically map a path back to the source, Korniski said.

That pattern didn’t emerge in this case, and Korniski said he couldn’t confirm or rule out any possible source of the eastside smell. That includes the sewers, which he noted can emit a gassy odor when a dry spell is followed by a heavy rain. (After a dry spell, Detroit had about a quarter-inch of rain on March 26 , the day before people noticed the odor.)

To help investigators trace any future smell to its source, Greenberg of EGLE urged neighbors to call both DTE and EGLE, and “they should call immediately.”

“You can do both,” she said. “You’re talking about your health.”

Smell something bad in Detroit? Call this number · Outlier Media