SAN DIEGO — People in North Park reached out to CBS 8 about a standing water issue on their street. They say the puddles of water collect mosquitoes and carry a foul odor. CBS 8’s Brian White paid a visit to the 4300 block of 34th Street to talk with neighbors and get to the bottom of it.
“It’s an ongoing issue with mosquitoes, the smell, the eye sore looking at it,” said Page Carman. “It’s horrid.”
Neighbors are frustrated by the standing water in the street that never seems to go away. They say it’s been happening for years.
WATCH RELATED: New water restrictions in San Diego
“There’s just a lot of mud and puddling around, just a lot of sludge that sort of collects and takes a long time to evaporate,” said Rick Evert, who has lived in a nearby apartment complex for two years.
A common complaint from people on this street is the unbearable smell.
“It’s very disgusting,” said neighbor Ellie Thayer, who lives across the street. “Coming home at night and just getting off of work and you just get hit with this pungent smell.”
“It’s really bad,” said Evert. “I’m right over here on the second floor and we smell it depending on the shift of the wind. This has been continuously an ongoing problem. I mean it comes all the way from down there all the way over there and it really stinks a lot of times here.”
A viewer sent CBS 8 a cell phone video taken outside a home nearby where it seems their sprinkler system is over-watering every morning and causing part of the problem.
RELATED: 'We're still not in great shape' | Conservation stressed as California's water crisis continues
WATCH RELATED: California's water crisis continues
“There’s a pool that’s just wet, I mean on the sidewalk where it pools up and the grass is definitely over-watered,” said Carman. “It just starts to stream from the middle of the house all the way down past our building.”
CBS 8 spoke to a renter who lives there about the sprinkler problem and he said he would let the owner know about it. Neighbors say this isn’t the first time they’ve complained about those sprinklers, so CBS 8 called the City of San Diego’s water waster hotline and reported it.
“I can just see the stream going down and certain parts it just kind of pools because of the unevenness of the street,” said Carman CBS 8 also filled out a Get it Done report to the City about the drainage issue there. Neighbors are hoping for a remedy.
“Everyone pays a good amount of rent and we live in a beautiful community so if we could nip this in the bud and get proper drainage out here to alleviate the problem, I think that would just be an overall great thing for the community,” said Thayer.