EUREKA! RESIDENTS SENSE END IS NEAR FOR MYSTERY SMELL.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS -- The smell tingles the schnoz, then nearly bowls you over as you crack the front door.

A foul mystery stench has wafted since May through Woodford Manor, causing residents -- and even pets -- to flee their sun decks for air-conditioned sanctuary.

"Right now, I feel like I'm living in a toilet," said Marsha Kavaller, a 26-year resident who lives near Victory Boulevard and Shoup Avenue. "I can't sit in my backyard and have a cup of coffee. It's horrendous.

"The dog didn't even want to go out -- it's so intense."

It starts early in the morning, residents say, an odor so foul that joggers from Shoup to as far west as Fallbrook avenues clutch handkerchiefs to their sniffers.

The olfactory assault then wanes by midmorning and is gone on the afternoon breeze.

For months, residents have called city and county offices for help, but the reek has clung to this neighborhood of $1 million homes like stink on a dog.

"You walk out of your house, open your windows and you think there's a skunk outside," said Judith Rucker of the Woodford Manor Homeowners Association, which represents 112 homes between Shoup and Fallbrook avenues. "We have no clue."

Some say toilet. Some say skunk or rotten eggs. One neighbor even went as far as to say it smells like "a dead elephant."

But like many mystery stenches across Los Angeles, such malodorous events can be hard to pin down.

Neighbors have long blamed Calabasas Creek, a flood-control channel that flows diagonally through Woodland Hills into the Los Angeles River.

Others have pointed to standing water on Capistrano Street, suspected of breeding mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus that has caused crows to drop dead on lawns.

River experts say it could be an algae bloom, illegally dumped trash, dead animals or fish. Or even a backyard swimming pool turned sour through lack of maintenance.

Complaints have flooded into the offices of Councilman Dennis Zine and public works departments.

"I have a good nose for anything illegal or unethical," Zine said. "The neighbors shouldn't tolerate it. We'll follow it up right away. Whatever it is, we'll bring in resources to eliminate it."

Zine won't have to wait long. After city public works officials turned their noses toward the problem, they pointed toward the county, which maintains the creek.

Late Thursday, county public works fessed up.

"This year, the smell started a little early," said Kathy Salama, a spokeswoman for the county Department of Public Works. "We've been cleaning it out since June 19; it should be done by (today)."

County workers have scraped a foul blend of trash and standing water out of Calabasas Creek along a 2.5-mile stretch from Valley Circle Boulevard to where it meets the L.A. River headwaters in Canoga Park, she said.

But because the mucky debris must be dried in piles along the creek banks, Salama said, it might be until July 6 until the trash is picked up -- and the aroma banished from Woodford Manor.

By then, the stench may be old hat for residents within its cloud.

"I went out in the backyard (this morning) and it almost knocked me over," Kavaller said, staring into the concrete channel, its clear water floating past a bed of soft green algae.

"What bothers me, I think I'm getting used to it."

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Area of mystery odor