Delco stinks (again) and people have theories

Delaware County residents are raising a stink about a rancid smell that’s wafting through Delco and those who’ve smelt it have questions about who — or what — dealt it.

“What is the diarrhea smell on 252 by the springton dam?????” someone nonchalantly asked on the Delco Reddit page last week.

“Anyone figure out what that odor was in Delco today? Smelled like gas all over” someone posted Wednesday.

PECO spokesperson Candice Womer said the utility company responded to 40 calls throughout the county for reports of a gas odor on Wednesday and one call on Thursday. Investigators determined the cause of the smell was not related to natural gas, she said.

The county’s 911 center received multiple reports about the smell from residents and the Delaware County Emergency Services Department is investigating, according to FOX29, but a cause has not been determined.

A message left for Edward Beebe, deputy directory of the department, was not returned. A spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Protection said that agency has not received any reports.

Of course, Delconians had their very-unserious theories about the source of the smell on social media, ranging from “the Delco Pooper is back” to “Eddy unloading the RV.” There were even reports that the stench made family members turn against one another, particularly in the confined spaces of automobiles, where parents accused their young of having stinky feet and children leveled silent-but-deadly fart accusations against the very people who brought them into this world.

The smell was likened online to human excrement, skunk, sulfur, rotten eggs, “every dead rat from the bubble gum factory,” sauerkraut, and dead bodies (human and animal) by county residents everywhere from Clifton Heights to Marcus Hook.

Theories about the stench included that it may have come from a tanker spill of 2,000 gallons of home heating oil Monday in Upper Providence Township, some of which got into nearby Ridley Creek. Another popular hypothesis circulating is that the smell may be a result of seasonal turnover at the Springton Reservoir, which is when a body of water equalizes in temperature in the fall, the sediment at the bottom is stirred, and sulfur and methane are released into the air.

While nobody nose the cause yet, this is not the first time Delco has smelled funky. For several months in 2020, residents reported a foul odor throughout the county that was unpredictable, temporary, and tough to pin down.

According to an Inquirer article from the time, the county’s emergency services department worked with the DEP to roll out new technology, like handheld testing meters, to help track the source. The DEP also investigated nearby industrial facilities and pipelines to make sure they weren’t behind the smell.