The booming $9 billion Kentucky bourbon industry has created a boom in something else: Whiskey fungus.
New whiskey warehouses, long a part of the Bluegrass landscape and more recently fueled by tax breaks to encourage growth, are increasingly unwelcome even in rural areas. Opponents worry about the environmental risks — from fire, fish kills and fungus — of so much whiskey in irreplaceable rural landscapes.
Neighbors of proposed bourbon rickhouses in at least three counties — Henry, Franklin and Anderson — have been fighting plans to build warehouse campuses that they fear will inundate their homes, cars, gardens, playgrounds and property with the black mold-like growth.
