Homeowners in Long Beach say the stench from a local Porta-Potty company is taking over the neighborhood. Mekahlo Medina reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Monday Sept. 23, 2024.
On any given day the last four years, neighbors off Cherry Avenue and East 56th Street in North Long Beach said you can’t escape the smell of sewage in their neighborhood.
“It smells like a toilet bowl,” said Lydia Santana, who walks by a porta-potty rental company whose business is sewage. “The smell is horrible.”
United Rental moved into the Cherry Avenue location in 2020, according to the manager, who refused to comment about neighbors' complaints.
“With this hot weather, you can really smell it,” said Robert Salinas, who has lived in their neighborhood for more than 30 years. “(It smells) like poop, and sometimes it’s really overbearing.”
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“It smells like a cat or something like that died,” said Ray Lou, who gets the brunt of the odor -- his house is directly across the street from the company. “We just keep in the house.“
“It’s very bad, it smells like somebody is dead, real nasty,” said Lamont Williams, who smells it as he drops off recyclables at the plant next door. “It smells bad and horrible, like death… Nobody does nothing about it.”
Neighbors said they’ve reached out to the city for help, but to no avail.
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NBCLA reached out to Councilman Al Austin’s office for comment, but did not hear back early Monday afternoon.
One neighbor reached out the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), who told them the porta-potty company could be cited if more than six complaints were filed against them.
So far, there is officially only one complaint filed.
“People don’t want to live like that. People don’t want to smell that smell especially if you’re a resident,” said Salinas.
