Saturday May 15 2:17 AM ET

Sewage Splatters Salt Lake Valley

By PAUL FOY Associated Press Writer

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Maybe it's a bird, maybe it's a plane. But it is certainly sewage.

And it's no joke in the Salt Lake Valley, where gobs of thick, raw sewage have fallen from the sky a dozen times since April 9, soiling as many as seven houses at once.

Neighbors are pointing fingers at aircraft, but the Federal Aviation Administration says commercial jets aren't designed to jettison sewage. A biplane was spotted before one attack, but federal agents said the tip didn't pan out.

Sheriff's deputies are studying ``splatter patterns'' and firefighters are hosing down houses. Prosecutors have assigned an investigator to the case and authorities are issuing stern warnings.

``It has never been funny,'' said Mayor Janice Auger of hard-hit suburban Taylorsville. ``The experience is really gross. The smell is terrible. This is a health issue. There's a lot of diseases in fecal matter.''

``It is feces, but they can't tell if it's animal or human,'' sheriff's Capt. Lee Smith said of the first lab tests on the foul emissions.

The initial strikes have spawned crude, ground-launched copycats, and edgy residents are reporting even minor bird droppings on their cars.

Tom Perkins says it would take a ``600-pound pigeon with diarrhea'' to produce the coverage that prompted his son to ask, ``Dad, what's all the mud doing on the house?''

It took 500 gallons of water and 30 gallons of bleach to clean the home that is 2,000 feet below a flight path where jets glide at 200 mph toward Salt Lake City International Airport.

The FAA has all but ruled out jets as a culprit, saying their toilet tanks can be flushed only from an exterior valve.

Any leak would contain a telltale bluish disinfectant, the FAA and aircraft manufacturers say, and none of the splatterings had a trace of blue.

The FAA, no stranger to reports of weird phenomena, doesn't know what to make of the mess. ``We never heard anything like this,'' agency spokesman Mitch Barker said, ``nothing like what's been going on in Salt Lake.''