"What's that smell?" asked Therese Mooney.
An acrid, chemical odor—like a giant permanent marker marinated in lighter fluid—had stunk up the neighborhood for weeks.
Muessig, too, had noticed. She'd followed her nose to the alley just beyond the house next to hers, where an orange-hued wooden utility pole towered overhead. Xcel Energy had replaced an older pole with this one a few months earlier.
Muessig showed Mooney the offending pole and promised to call Xcel Energy to find out why it stunk. She couldn't reach a live person via Xcel's automated system, so she reported a gas leak. The repairman who arrived told Muessig that the utility pole was treated with pentachlorophenol. The stench would worsen in the summer heat, the repairman warned.
Muessig and Mooney immediately began researching pentachlorophenol on the internet. The petroleum-based preservative can extend a pole's life by as much as 50 years. But the chemical is now banned (or more accurately, not approved) in 26 countries, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers it a probable carcinogen. Once widely used as an herbicide, penta is now banned for all uses—all uses, that is, except treating utility poles.
As the months passed and the weather heated up, the odor became so intense that Muessig shut her windows, and Mooney kept her air conditioner turned off. Guests complained; parties were canceled. Mooney stayed out of her garden. Their husbands no longer grilled meat on the shared barbecue atop the fence dividing their yards.
Muessig asked Xcel to replace the pole, and the company offered to swap the Southern pine pole for cedar—at a cost to her of $1,000. When an Xcel employee checked the pole and said it didn't stink, Mooney began doubting that the company would fix the problem at all.
Full story: http://www.citypages.com/2009-03-11/news/seward-residents-xcel-s-smelly-poles-stinking-up-minneapolis/
