A two-story brick house at the corner of Sorrento Boulevard and Dodge Park Road in Sterling Heights looks like any other home in the neighborhood. It is not. Inside sits a $5.3 million facility built by Macomb County to strip hydrogen sulfide gas out of the sewage line running beneath the area, ending years of foul smells for nearby residents without raising anyone's sewer bill.
A House Built to Hide a Big Problem
The facility is owned and managed by the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor Drain Board, according to The Detroit News. The Oakland-Macomb Interceptor itself carries raw sewage through 11 Macomb County communities and 13 Oakland County communities, the outlet reported — though a separate report from ClickOnDetroit described one interceptor serving 11 communities and another carrying flow from 12 communities in southeast Oakland County. Construction on the Sorrento Boulevard facility began in March 2025 and the plant became fully operational in March 2026, with no increase in sewer rates for residents.
Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash said the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor works around the clock to move wastewater safely through the communities it serves. The upgrades, he said, deliver a few distinct benefits at once: “These improvements help protect the system from corrosion, reduce nuisance odors, and extend the life of infrastructure,” Nash said, per the same report. Macomb County public works leaders had been searching for a facility-based fix to the persistent sewage smells plaguing the Sterling Heights neighborhood.
How the Odor-Eating System Works
The smells associated with sewers come from hydrogen sulfide gas, which forms from turbulence as raw sewage flows through the pipes, the station's report notes. That gas is more than just unpleasant — it is corrosive and degrades the interior of concrete pipe, which can eventually lead to a collapse of the interceptor and a sinkhole, according to the same account. Inside the brick house, a large fan pulls hydrogen sulfide straight from the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor pipe, then pushes the captured air through activated carbon media that polishes it before it is released back into the environment.
The building also doubles as cover for an underground metering station that measures raw sewage flowing through the area, the article notes. Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller said the structure was designed with the neighborhood in mind. The facility was built to be aesthetically pleasing, fit in with surrounding homes, eliminate foul smells and protect underground infrastructure, Miller said, according to the report. Despite the heavy-duty equipment running inside, the apparatus is noisy indoors but inaudible from outside the house, per the same account.
Ribbon-Cutting Caps Years of Complaints
Macomb County officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the facility Monday at the Sorrento Boulevard and Dodge Park Road site. Liz Sierawski called the project a win for residents who had lived with the odor problem for years, The Detroit News reported. For a neighborhood that had grown accustomed to the smell, the opening marked a tangible end point to a long-running nuisance.
More Odor Fixes Already in the Pipeline
The Sorrento Boulevard project is not an isolated fix. The county recently finished a similar odor and corrosion-control setup on 15 Mile Road between Hayes and Garfield roads, according to C %26 G Newspapers, where the broader sewer rehabilitation project was described as about 95% complete. Macomb County also wants to eventually build another odor-control facility near Dodge Park and Utica roads, though officials said no timetable has been set, per a separate C %26 G Newspapers report.
Officials also plan to deploy a mobile odor-control unit while a further project is pending, ClickOnDetroit reported. That planned facility would sit along the south side of 15 Mile Road west of Schoenherr Road in Sterling Heights, with construction expected to break ground in 2027, according to the same outlet. The stakes behind all this investment are not hypothetical: a sewer collapse and sinkhole opened on 15 Mile Road in Fraser, between Utica Road and Hayes Road, on Christmas Eve in 2016, C %26 G Newspapers reported, underscoring why county officials have made corrosion control a priority alongside odor relief.
