Jerry Kinnebrew sits in his vehicle near the gates of a sewage lagoon at Ceres Industrial Park in Flowers Tuesday.(Melanie Duncan Thortis The Vicksburg Post)

[7/16/03]An odor problem aggravating at least one family near the Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex at Flowers is a result of a one-time event at the Tyson Foods chicken-cooking plant and has been fixed, the director of the complex said.

Marjorie Kinnebrew, who lives with her husband, Jerry, on Freetown Road north of Ceres, said smells from the sewage treatment lagoons at Ceres have been making their home difficult to live in for the past two weeks. The problems reported by the Kinnebrews are not the first ones that people who live near the industrial park operated by the Warren County Port Commission have had with the stench coming from the park’s sewage facilities.

The park was created, north of Interstate 20 near Flowers in 1987 with a single-cell lagoon designed to treat household type sewage. When the McCarty Co., which has since become Tyson, built the chicken-cooking facility, the lagoon was overwhelmed with biological wastes. As they rotted, even vehicles passing on the highway became filled with the sour aroma.

After repeated Department of Environmental Quality actions, the port commission built an improved, multi-lagoon system that can more easily treat the chicken fat and cooking oils produced by Tyson.

The most recent problem began “the day before the Fourth of July,” Kinnebrew said. She said she and her son, Lance, talked to port commission officials and District 1 Supervisor David McDonald.

But, she said, she could not tell if anything was done to alleviate the smells.

“We have talked to the Kinnebrews and tried to keep them up to date” on progress, said Jimmy Heidel, executive director of the port commission, adding the most recent smells were caused by a one-time incident at Tyson.

“They had one of their pumps go out,” he said, explaining that malfunction kept the plant from properly pretreating its effluent before turning it into the sewage system.

Since the lagoons could not properly process the untreated material and since it was of such a large volume, smells resulted.

“We have been working with our environmental (consultant) and Tyson,” Heidel said.

One idea was to get a skimmer truck to remove the heavy, oily sludge from the first lagoon, but that was discarded in favor of chemical treatment.

That chemical treatment was applied the first time last week and again Monday, Heidel said.

“At first it did not seem to be working, but all of a sudden, it started to dissolve,” Heidel said, adding that the effects of the first chemical application and the one Monday should abate the smell by Thursday.

Jim Pilgrim, a member of the port commission staff, said high summer temperatures may tend to make the smell a little worse, but it is not causing it.

McDonald said he has been keeping up with the situation and trying to work with the Kinnebrews, Tyson and others involved.

He also said he was confident the measures taken will be effective and if not, Tyson will take other measures to solve the problem.

Heidel said the commission received a grant for $650,000 to make more improvements to the lagoon, but when bids were opened in June, all were in excess of the $575,000 engineer’s estimate and were rejected. The Warren County Board of Supervisors is in the process of advertising for new bids on the project.

“This will give us more capacity and ability to handle (similar) problems,” Heidel said, adding the improvements would increase the lagoons’ capacity from 500,000 gallons of waste per day to 1.5 million gallons per day.

The chicken-cooking plant was the park’s first tenant, and has been followed by several others including, most recently, two tier-one suppliers to the Nissan plant near Canton.