NYC Officials: Secaucus Reeks

In what is really quite routine in the New York City – New Jersey region, City officials are pointing fingers at New Jersey as the cause of the stink that hit Manhattan yesterday. New Jersey officials are pointing right back. This is considered recreational in that area.  

Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection, said Tuesday that his agency was pretty sure the source of the smell was along New Jersey's industrialized waterfront, just across the Hudson River from New York.

"The way we tracked the dispersion of the smell and the prevailing winds indicates that it came from New Jersey, somewhere near Secaucus," Sturcken said.

The strong odor, detectable from Manhattan's southern tip to well past Central Park, led to some precautionary evacuations, and about a dozen people were taken to hospitals complaining of difficulty breathing, Fire Department spokesman Tony Sclafani.

Meanwhile, New Jersey officials didn't bother to actually check out the reports of the bad smell coming from within their own state. That should give Jersey residents great faith in their government.

Complaints about the odor also came from Bergen and Hudson counties in New Jersey, but no air sampling was done there because the state Department of Environmental Protection had no specific locations to test, spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said.

Um, so it smells bad all over in New Jersey? Well, NYC officials would say that. (I still believe it will turn out to be an over-injection of methyl mercaptan into the natural gas mains, as I pointed out yesterday. The sudden reports coming from all over lower Manhattan would indicate, to me at least, that the smell didn't just blow in on the wind.)

UPDATE: The New York Post is blaming a swamp in New Jersey, but gets a tad confused at the end of the article and mentions mercaptan as well. Jury is still out. Suitably Flip says Jersey done it, though. A Blog for All: It figures.