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LAYTON — There's a smelly situation for residents in a Layton neighborhood who are dealing with the stench of rotting crops.
The Pheasant Place subdivision is up against a plot of land that was once used to grow cabbage. Last fall, the farmland was sold to a developer and that is when residents said the potent problem began.
“On Christmas Eve, I sent out an email and said, ‘Does anyone know why our neighborhood smells?’” said resident Stephanie Heiner. “And that’s when everybody starting putting together that it was the cabbage fields.”
In Heiner’s home, it’s the basement that gets the brunt of the odor.
“It smelled like raw cabbage, like raw sewage cabbage, it was pretty bad,” she said. “At night it’s really, really bad.”
The stench is also concerning to resident Amberly Hildt, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years. In that time, she says she’s never experienced a fouler odor.
“It’s unlivable. It’s just gross,” Hildt said. “It’s like dirty diapers, mildew. It’s just horrific.”
City officials said when the land was sold last year, the developer inherited the bad crops.
“They were kind of at a loss to what to do with all this cabbage. I don’t think it was suitable to be harvested … so they eventually put it in a pile,” said Layton assistant city attorney Nic Mills.
In December, the pile of cabbage started to get a little smelly, so residents alerted the city and raised a stink at the last City Council meeting.
“A resident out there found some rotting cabbage and brought it in and put it right by the city attorney and I think drove home his point,” Mills said.
The developer is now working with the city’s code enforcement division to till the damaged crop in hopes of getting rid of the odor. The cabbage heads are all spread out to dry. The hope is for the city to clear the air so that residental development can happen this fall as planned.
