Rishon Lezion officials believe they have found the source of a sharp, gas-like smell that has hung over parts of the city since Sunday: fuel and oil waste illegally dumped into a sewer manhole in a remote area of western Rishon Lezion.
Mayor Raz Kinstlich announced the finding in a Facebook post overnight Monday, after touring the city with teams from Home Front Command, the Environment Ministry, the municipality and the Meniv water corporation.
“We have apparently found the source of the smell at a remote location in the west of the city, and it is a serious sanitary hazard of fuel and oil waste that was poured into a sewer manhole,” Kinstlich wrote.
Home Front Command and the Environment Ministry took samples from the site, and officials assess that it is the source of the odor. In the coming days, the municipality and the Environment Ministry will flush and clean the contaminated sewer lines to remove the remaining pollutants. A comprehensive investigation has also been opened to identify who dumped the waste.
Kinstlich thanked Home Front Command chief Maj. Gen. Shai Klapper and his teams for joining the search at his request. “I very much hope that with this we have reached the end of the great, and smelly, mystery that has troubled us over the past two days,” he wrote.
Residents of western Rishon Lezion began reporting a strong smell resembling gas on Sunday, and hundreds of complaints followed, with residents describing nausea, burning sensations and difficulty breathing. Two women were taken for medical treatment. Fire and rescue teams carried out extensive sweeps in the area, but tests with monitoring equipment found no unusual concentrations of gas or hazardous materials.
An environmental expert quoted by Globes warned that dumping fuel into the sewer system also poses a direct risk to wastewater treatment plants, including the Shafdan facility that serves the Dan region.
