Charlotte smelt it. Who dealt it? City left with stink after company’s tank mistake
Editor’s note: Legacy Environmental Services issued a statement on Friday about the mishap. Find it here.
The strong and foul natural-gas smell that stunk up parts of Charlotte on Thursday morning can be traced to a mistake after an environmental cleanup company destroyed tanks that contained a harmless gas odorant, Piedmont Natural Gas said.
A weather event known as a temperature inversion likely spread the stench, city officials said. The odor was expected to dissipate throughout the day, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management said in a tweet at 11:22 a.m.
The company was destroying mercaptan tanks that were mistakenly reported empty, Piedmont said in a news release. The Charlotte Fire Department said four storage tanks were involved.
The leak happened at a site on North Graham Street near uptown, Piedmont spokesman Jason Wheatley told The Charlotte Observer. The utility did not hire the company nor use any of its assets or resources, he said.
Wheatley referred other questions to Legacy Environmental Services for comment. A Charlotte spokesman for the company could not be reached by the Observer on Thursday afternoon.
Piedmont uses mercaptan, also is known as methanethiol, to give natural gas “a distinctive smell of rotten eggs,” the utility said. Natural gas has no smell. The gas additive also is used to give a scent to pesticides, jet fuels and plastics, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Mercaptan does not pose a danger or require evacuation, Piedmont said. The utility said it is bringing crews in from across the Carolinas to respond to all emergency calls to verify that a natural gas leak is not present.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been notified about the leak, according to Charlotte Fire.
At 11:26 a.m., Piedmont tweeted there were no natural gas leaks reported in Charlotte.
Temperature inversion
A temperature inversion may have spread the foul stench, officials and meteorologists said.
An inversion happens as air temperature increases with height and traps smells closer to the ground, according to the National Weather Service.
A high volume of calls to 911 about the odor began to come in at 8:45 a.m., according to a message from CharMeck Alerts.
“There is no need to report this odor unless you have a medical emergency or you feel that this odor is coming from your home or building,” according to the alert.
The gas odor prompted an evacuation at the county courthouse, the Mecklenburg County Sherrif’s Office said in a tweet. Fire officials later gave an all clear.
The county closed several offices early because of a “heavy natural gas odor”: Mecklenburg County’s Office of Vital Records on North College Street; Criminal Justice Services on East 4th Street; Southeast Health Department on Billingsley Road; and Register of Deeds on East 4th Street.
“The decision to close the Register of Deeds office earlier today was made was based on an effort to ensure the safety of employees and customers,” the county said in a statement.
Firefighters were seen in the 3100 block of North Davidson Street around 6 a.m. for a possible gas leak, the community manager at Mercury NoDa Apartments told The Charlotte Observer. The smell lingered after firefighters left, the manager said.
Charlotte Fire officials did not immediately respond to an Observer request for comment about the reported leak in NoDa.
‘Picturing all of NoDa exploding’
Kimberly Vuxta and her husband woke up with their 9-month-old son around 6:45 a.m. and everything was going normally — until about two hours later.
Around 8:15, Vuxta began smelling the gas odor in her home, she told the Observer.
“At first I thought maybe I didn’t turn off the oven all the way,” she said.
She heard about a possible leak from a neighbor’s call minutes later. Her neighbor complained of a headache and said outside smelled “really bad,” she recalled.
Vuxta then went to Amélie’s French Bakery and Café in NoDa — about half a mile from her home — and continued to smell the odor.
“I didn’t know if it was just on my body or if it was a huge gas leak,” she said. “At this point, I had only heard from my neighbors. I was just picturing all of NoDa exploding.”
She called Piedmont and was told not to return home, and a crew would be sent, she said. Vuxta said she did not realize how widespread the odor was until she saw social media posts and comments on message boards.
The oven gas-like odor didn’t bother Vuxta too much despite her “sensitive nose,” but it was “really strong” outside, she said.
“I did not faint or anything,” Vuxta said. “I think if I spent a prolonged period of time outside, maybe I would have.”
Vuxta said the odor had gone away by the time she returned home around 1 p.m.
Staff writer Charlotte Kramon contributed to this story.
This story was originally published July 14, 2022 at 10:04 AM.
