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What's that smell? Southeast Las Vegas neighbors complain of foul odor emanating from Rawhide wash

Posted at 7:34 PM, Feb 15, 2022
and last updated 2022-02-16 01:49:13-05

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Melissa Taylor’s boyfriend moved into a nice home in southeast Las Vegas about four years ago. There’s not too much traffic, school buses whiz by and there is an in-ground pool to enjoy with a large backyard.

The one thing missing: the smell of fresh air.

"It’s hard to maintain the yard with this smell, especially in the summer time when bugs are flying all around," Taylor said. "I get severe headaches from the smell just by being out here for a short time. It’s hard to enjoy such a nice area."

The Rawhide channel runs straight through the neighborhood, near Rawhide Street and Sandhill Road, and into the Flamingo wash, which then travels to Lake Mead. As expected, there's water in the wash that abuts the property — but that’s not all. Tuesday, there were heaps of garbage and weeds with bugs swarming around in Taylor's backyard.

Taylor says you can also sometimes find urine, feces, syringes and homeless people in the wash. She says it hasn’t been cleaned in more than two years, while the main channels are cleaned once a month.

"People have come out and haven’t done anything. If they do get down there and do anything, they just use a weed eater and cut the grass and leave it," Taylot said. "That’s not going to help. It’s just going to stay there and build up more sludge."

Taylor tried calling the county back in the summer, but says nothing was done. 13 Action News reached out to the county to get to the dirty bottom of the problem.

"Sometimes, there are side channels, which this sounds like it is. We should be cleaning those out, but apparently we don’t," said Commissioner Tick Segerblom. "Now that it’s on my radar, I’ll make sure it gets cleaned out regularly."

The commissioner extended his apologies to the neighborhood and says action will be taken immediately to address the issue.

"That’s something that we somehow neglected. Based on this complaint, I directed public works to go clean out the channel. They told me they will start that tomorrow," Segerblom said.

Taylor plans to hold him to that and said she would keep in touch for any further developments.