What is this wretched smell in my neighborhood?

last summer, the other half of my neighborhood smelled like pee, especially in the evenings. my sister and i always jokingly blamed the smell on a certain group of crackheads living in a trailer on that side. they’ve moved, and the smell has returned with the humidity although it’s not hot yet. what is it?

Ummmmmm… takers anyone? This one has me stumped…:dubious:

At the risk of sounding facieous, ah heck who am I kidding…

Go to someone and ask if you smell like pee.
:wink:

lutafisk. all bad smells in the world come from lutafisk.

L U T A F I S K !

I get the same thing, and not just in the summer. My guess is either fresh and/or dry mulch or the smell wafting from the sewer grates.

I hate using such a lovely word like ‘wafting’ with ‘sewer.’

There was a weed or wild grass that smelled just like cat piss when it was broken, but this was in Cyprus in December.

I see by your location you are in a crappy little town. Maybe somebody used the wrong hole in da toilet? But seriously, are you near the ocean or marshes? Certain times off year we’d get odd smells at low tide in Beaufort.

How close to farming do you live?

I lived in a large city that was completely surrounded by farmland. Anytime the winds picked up it blew manure smell all into the city. It was deffinitely stinky.

boxwood trees smell like pee in spring and early summer

Do you live near a sewage treatment plant, or a polluted river? Unfortunately, the Lackawanna River runs right along our neighborhood sewage treatment plant, and sometimes there is “backwash”. Softball games on humid summer evenings are not the most pleasant events, as the softball field is about a mile downstream, and the stench can hang heavy at times.

It could be worse:

My bet would be with either silage, or a bakery recycling plant.

Could there be a paper mill around? Those smell TERRIBLE. Where I used to live, if the wind was just right, you could smell the paper mills for miles and miles…ewwwww!

no, there’s not a farm around in maybe 60 miles, not a paper mill in maybe forty, no suspicious looking trees; and the septic smell is different… i’m definitely familiar with it.

Maybe some local cremations going on?

Yeah, paper mills don’t smell like pee, but God knows they smell. So it was just a WAG on my part.

One of our dogs once produced a gaseous emission of such horrid sewer-like proportions that we didn’t even realize it was him for a while – we thought the smell was coming from the sink, and that there was a problem with the sewer lines! Now, THAT was horrible.

Pee smell…as in an amonia type smell? Maybe a meth lab???

Could be a sewer pump station in the neighborhood. These are not large and can be mistaken for an ordinary manhole. If the pumps are not working correctly the sewage stays in the wet well too long and stinks. You might call the water/sewer folks and ask them about it. OTOH, a certain amount of odor is expected with pump stations and there might not be anything they can do about it.

Are septic tanks used in your area? Or,

Twice a year reservoirs ‘turn over’. The smell of drinking water can be terrible for a few days. If a pool was filled at that time, the smell could extend several blocks.

Does anyone in your neighborhood have a big vegetable garden and a compost pile? I know if I use too much grass clippings & not enough sawdust in my compost pile, it gives off an ammonia smell.