THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 29, 1995 TAG: 9509290626
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Something smells in Currituck County.
According to some longtime residents, though, the stench on the mainland is nothing new.
The strong, repugnant odor is caused by decaying seagrass from the Currituck Sound.
``Every fall, that stuff sort of dies off the top, and if we don't have wind or something to blow it out, it sort of sits there and bubbles up into that white, foamy stuff,'' said Jackie Collier, who has lived on Church's Island in Waterlily since 1966.
The offensive odor, strongest along the shoreline, can smell like a cesspool to the uninitiated. But county health department officials said Thursday that Mother Nature, not man, is responsible.
``What's happening is the grass growing in the sound dies out, and the wind blows it up on shore,'' said John Baum, the environmental health coordinator for the Currituck County Health Department.
As Collier puts it: ``It's just plain rotten and smells like sewage, and, technically, I guess it is nature's way of eliminating the tops of these grasses.
``You could call it nature's septic tank.''
Residents in Corolla, on the other side of the sound, can also smell the decomposing milfoil if the winds are just right.
They worried that the recent smells were related to the nasty odors this summer when the Ocean Hill sewage treatment plant malfunctioned.
At least a couple of hundred gallons of raw waste spilled out of pipes and lift tanks in early August after lightning struck a transformer on a power pole.
Ocean Hill resident John Schrote said that county workers he contacted initially told him it was most likely milfoil or algae creating the stink.
The Ocean Hill sewage system was repaired within a day, Baum said. However, the county placed a moratorium on housing permits until it was sure the problem had been corrected.
Still uncertain of the recent smell's origin, Corolla residents at this week's town meeting asked about the ``noxious odors'' in Ocean Hill, one of the northernmost communities on Currituck's Outer Banks.
Baum said the milfoil malodor should be gone as soon as temperatures start to drop in a couple of weeks. by CNB