LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A thick gray sludge runs deep through Blue Lick creek in Bullitt County, and the trail of waste leads right to a state contractor working on a Louisville road project.
The creek runs right by Rhonda Gibbins' home in the Pryor Valley neighborhood of Shepherdsville. Last week, Gribbons said she noticed the water was a bit cloudy, and then her grandson told her about dead fish along the creek bank.
"Oh it sickens me," Gribbins said. "It just sickens me that some think that this is OK."
It prompted a closer look, so Gribbins took a four-wheeler into the creek
"This is all settled in the bottom," Gribbins said, scooping out the gray colored sludge-like material. "And that is just concrete slurry."
Slurry is a type of liquid that is left over when concrete is ground or cut during construction.
"This is not OK," she said. "I mean, you could write your name in it. This is nasty."
The construction waste varies from inches to as much as a foot deep in some parts of the creek, Gribbins said.
But where is it coming from?
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is paying Bluegrass Contracting about $4 million in taxpayer money to fix roughly four miles of Poplar Level Road between Poplar Tree Court and Lincoln Avenue.
The slurry ends up on a private property off Brooks Hill Road owned by Virgil Warren, according to Kentucky's Division of Water.
Bobby and Dana Hensley live next door to Warren's beneficial reuse of solid waste site and said trucks come in the middle of the night.
"A spotlight literally shines in our kitchen window and shines in our house," Dana Hensley said. "It's noise all night long and wakes you up."
It all came to light when the image of a large tanker stuck in the muck appeared on social media.
"It's up to the contractor to dispose of that waste material," KYTC Spokeswoman Andrea Clifford said.
Clifford said Bluegrass Contracting subcontracted the so-called "Diamond Grinding" process that creates the slurry, and it had an agreement with Warren to dump on the land.
They brought 41 truckloads, thousands of gallons every trip.
But the slurry flowed over a cliff on the property and into the creek. Officials said it has not impacted drinking water.
"Probably not so hazardous to the water, but if you have so much of it going into a stream, it chokes out the oxygen in the water and can affect the animals," Clifford said.
The creek feeds out to the Salt River about five miles downstream from Gribbins home, and all of the concrete sludge is heading that direction.
Inspectors from the Environmental Protection Agency, Kentucky Divisions of Water and Waste Management and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all visited the dump site Wednesday.
"This is clearly something that should never happen," Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet Communication Director John Mura said. "We have instructed the property owner to build an earthen dam to prevent any further movement of this material into the stream."
Mura said violations notices are coming, and fines could be up to $25,000 a day, but it's not clear who will pay: Bluegrass Construction, its subcontractor or the property owner.
Gribbins said it doesn't matter, as long as it gets cleaned up.
"This is not legal," Gribbins said. "Do something about it. We all pay our taxes, so now do your job."
Bluegrass Contracting did not return our calls. KYTC said the company's leaders voluntarily suspended the diamond grinding on the Poplar Level Road project until its disposal issue is resolved.
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