A mysterious stench offended the nostrils of valley residents for the third day in a row Saturday, and state environmental officials still could not pinpoint what was causing the vile odor.
Ron Hatch, deputy chief of the Bountiful Fire Department, said complaints started rolling in to his office at about 11:30 a.m. Between 20 and 30 people called during the next hour, and then the phones stopped ringing."It's kind of tapered off right now, and I can't smell it outside as strong as it was earlier," Hatch said about 1:10 p.m. "It smelled like rotten eggs."
He said none of the callers required medical attention, although "one young female individual claimed she was a little light-headed."
Kathy Lovoi, a dispatcher with the Bountiful Police Department, said she also took 30 to 40 calls between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
"We had a few complain about being nauseous, but nobody was sick enough that they asked for an ambulance," Lovoi said.
Carol Sisco, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said that agency also received complaints Saturday from Bountiful and Woods Cross. Complaints from those areas stopped after about an hour, she said, but a few North Salt Lake residents started calling in to complain about 3 p.m.
The department sent teams out to investigate, she said, but the source of the odor remains a mystery.
"We're looking everywhere," Sisco said. "We looked at the refineries, and we tried walking along the natural gas pipeline. . . . There is some burning going on in fields near the Great Salt Lake, but we don't have any idea if that could be causing it or not. We still don't have any answers."
The smelly saga started Thursday with a seven-minute gas burn from one of the cylinders at Chevron. The burn created a cloud of black smoke that drifted into downtown Salt Lake City, leading to evacuations at US WEST, Abravanel Hall and the University of Utah.
The smell eventually dissipated.
A similar smell affected an area west of the city Friday. About 50 people were treated for nausea outside the Southwest Airlines Reservation Center and another 10 were taken to hospitals. Medical crews also checked 27 children at the evacuated Washington Elementary.
Officials with the state Division of Air Quality said Friday's problem was not related to Thursday's incident at Chevron, blaming it instead on an inversion that traps emissions in layers that blanket the valley.
But Sisco said at the time that an inversion should have dissipated more quickly.
Chevron spokesman Walt Maguire said company officials remain fairly certain that the smells Friday and Saturday were not associated with the refinery.
He said Chevron is cooperating with ongoing testing. Since there are questions whether the Friday and Saturday incidents could be linked to the Thursday episode, Maguire said Chevron is "mighty interested" in finding the source of the odor.
"We've got no control over the weather, and it could basically blow everything out and we won't ever find it," Maguire said Saturday. "But that's why we're all here today, and we'll keep looking for it."