Kelo Neighborhood Stinks. Literally.

Four years after Kelo v. City of New London, where the Supreme Court upheld New London, Connecticut's controversial use of eminent domain to implement a "comprehensive redevelopment plan" that would provide "appreciable benefits to the community," the neighborhood still hasn't been developed. And it stinks. From The Day's Judy Benson:

For the past few weeks, periodic emanations from the city's sewage treatment plant have been unleashing some bad memories.

"It has been stinking," said Murray Renshaw, whose business, Renshaw Plumbing, is located at the intersection of Howard and Shaw streets, a few blocks from the plant.

Another neighborhood property owner, who asked not to be named, said he's noticed foul odors wafting around his doorstep for the past month or so. Mostly, he said, it's happened on weekends, early in the morning and at night. The treatment plant is located less than a quarter-mile away on Trumbull Street in the Fort Trumbull peninsula….

"That would be like we're going backwards," said [Jay] Wheeler, president of the East Willetts Neighborhood Association.

In the mid-1990s, residents of the homes and businesses that used to be in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood before it was razed by the New London Development Corp. complained repeatedly to the city about eye-burning odors from the plant. Some of the complainants engaged in dramatic stunts to make their point, donning gas masks, painting anti-odor slogans on buildings, dumping chicken manure in the City Hall elevator and parking a truck full of manure outside City Hall while councilors were inside deliberating the next year's budget….

In 1995, the city undertook a $2 million project to correct the odor problems. Then, in 1998, just as Pfizer Inc. was poised to begin building its $150 million office complex on Pequot Avenue next door to the sewage plant, the state awarded New London $7 million for further odor-control upgrades.

Rest here. Reason on Kelo here.

(Thanks to Bob Ewing for the tip.)