Dacia Torchia tries to avoid her basement. Especially when the foul, familiar smell creeps under the door just off the kitchen. She knows what’s waiting for her at the bottom of the dark stairway.
“I’m in a state of denial. Like if I don’t go downstairs, I don’t have to deal with it,” said Torchia, 55, a single mother who owns a century-old house at the bottom of a hill in Mount Vernon, New York. After heavy rains, her basement sometimes floods with dark, sludgy wastewater – 8in on bad days.
