The home of English rugby is encased in a "stinking cloud" from a nearby sewage works -- prompting locals to re-name Twickenham Stadium as "Stinkenham" or "Stinkers," according to the London TELEGRAPH. Locals living in the area in south west London say that the smell from the Mogden Sewage Treatment Works -- the second largest in the U.K. -- is "unbearable" at times, despite £140M ($219M) of improvement works in '13. Residents living near the 135-acre Thames Water-run plant, which serves 2.1 million people say the smell is still as "bad as ever" and that crowds attending the upcoming Rugby World Cup will be confronted by a "nasty whiff." During the warm-up game over the weekend -- in which England beat France 19-14 -- some of the 63,000 crowd got a "bit of a whiff" of the sewage works.
The Rugby World Cup kicks off at Twickenham on Sept. 18, with England taking on Fiji "at the 82,000-capacity stadium." Campaigners at the Mogden Residents' Action Group said the smell at the weekend was "disgraceful." A spokesperson for the group said, "If this is what we can expect throughout the summer and the World Cup it is disgraceful" (TELEGRAPH, 8/19).
