In 1968, or just before, the air began to stink on Kalamazoo’s east side.
The smell was so bad that people could hardly bear it, said Jim VanderRoest, who lived on Arthur Avenue near East Main Street and was about 12 at the time. “It was just a putrid odor, and it permeated the whole neighborhood,” he said.
How an effort to treat sewage, and clean up a river, went wrong.
