LONDON, Ky. (WYMT) – The bourbon company known as Sazerac has brought their bottled goods to Laurel County, however, some local residents said they are not welcome.
“They call it a nuisance, and that it is,” local resident, George Simpson said. “Well, you see this house beside of us here, it’s black. Ours was the same way.”
George Simpson is just one of many folks in London being impacted by the bourbon warehouses.
He and others said the distillery is causing alcohol to evaporate into the air and produce a black fungus growing on their property.
“Once they started building the barrels, about six months later we noticed some kind of dirt on the house and things like that. Then it just progressively got worse as they built more and more,” resident Andrew Yaden said.
Many residents said they have pressure washed their homes multiple times, something the bourbon company told residents they would take care of, but have yet to do.
“When they first moved here, we heard they offered to pressure wash our houses. We reached out to the barrel house manager as well as we have emailed some people,” Yaden said. “They denied that whiskey fungus is a real thing and said they will not pressure wash houses.”
Simpson said it takes a lot of time and resources to clean the outside of his home. He said with the fungus continuing to grow, the value of the homes will continue to decline.
“At least clean them for us like once or twice a year or better. It, you know, depreciates the value of the property I’d say. If we had to sell or something like that, we couldn’t sell,” said Simpson.
Residents also worry about the long term health effects.
“They say it’s not harmful to you. But anything that looks like that and does that to a house and will kill vegetation probably isn’t good for you. They tell us it’s fine,” Yaden said.
He said at the very least, they would appreciate help cleaning their homes.
“We would just be happy if they would, you know, wash and clean our houses. Yeah, that would pretty much be the best thing if they could do that for us. A lot of people out here, they take care of their stuff and it is aggravating.“
Some residents are joining forces to possibly bring action against the company.
Attorney Liddell Vaughn said, “We are exploring our legal options up to and including litigation to make sure that area residents are fairly compensated for the he damage to their properties, as well as legal options to force the owner of the rickhouses to use existing technologies and filtration systems to mitigate the amount of alcohol vapors that are released into the atmosphere. There are over 7,000 separate properties within three miles of the rickhouse location. This doesn’t affect just a few persons, but has a direct impact upon thousands.”
WYMT did reach out to officials with the Sazerac Company about the fungus issues and has not heard back.
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