Mill Road reopens between Green Bay & Teutonia following report of gas odor

GLENDALE (WITI) -- Officials temporarily closed Mill Road between Green Bay to Teutonia Thursday, February 5th following reports of a gas odor in the area. The odor was reportedly emanating from a deep tunnel extension access point.

It was enough for emergency crews to recommend people stay inside.

The North Shore Fire Department originally got the call about the odor at 10:46 a.m. from a passerby on Mill Road who noticed an odor.

When fire crews arrived, they noticed it too -- not natural gas but a combination of propane, raw sewage and something else.

"We did monitor some structures in the area to see if there are any gases to explosive limits in the area. There was not -- so again we sheltered people in place," said North Shore Fire Department Battalion Chief, Steve Brennan.

That means if they saw someone outside walking, they recommended they stay inside. They gave the same recommendation to a nearby school.

"Basically it was just a precautionary measure to determine what the source was. And officially where it was coming from," said Brennan.

They found a concentrated odor coming from a nearby ventilation shaft from the deep tunnel, but no dangerous readings came from the surface of the shaft.

"The condensation that comes from the shaft is normal on a daily basis, especially during the colder temperatures, but the odor appeared to be not normal from that ventilation shaft and we were determining to make sure there wasn't any explosive hazard of some sort of chemical that wasn't supposed to be down there," said Brennan.

So they called in MMSD for deeper monitoring.

"All the readings taken showed no risk of explosion. Not sure what caused the odor. We are venting the deep tunnel system. There are some massive vents or fans down at Jones Island, we can turn those on -- vent out the whole system," said Bill Graffin, spokesman for MMSD.

Chief Brennan says he was initially told it could be the result of the chemical process from sewer lining. Graffin says the only problem with that, is the sewer lining project is far from the site and wasn't going on Thursday.