Permits have been issued to restart an oil refinery on what’s locally known as the Barrett Refining site on Warrenton Road.

In filings with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, a company named Vicksburg Petroleum Products LLC says it plans to reactivate the defunct plant to be able to process about 10,000 barrels of crude oil daily with treatment capability and on-site storage.

Its planners face a March 2009 deadline to begin construction, but can request extensions from the MDEQ Permit Board, agency spokesman Robbie Wilbur said.

Principals in the company are Vicksburg developer Paul Campbell and Kenneth E. Spencer, an Oklahoma City-based real estate agent who confirmed its permits had passed muster with state environmental officials but declined further comment.

Abandoned since the plant closed and declared bankruptcy in 1996, three buildings and 11 tanks on the 30 acres where the former refinery operated were removed by the City of Vicksburg in 2005 after sludge and asbestos were detected. Multiple owners occupied the space until VPP purchased it in June 2007.

The site would have one casino operating to the immediate north, one is under construction a bit farther north and developers are following the regulatory path for a third to the south, which would also be south of Entergy’s Baxter-Wilson gas-fired electric plant.

The riverside refinery site was developed by Vicksburg businessman Mike Chaney, now state commissioner of insurance, and in 1979 started receiving crude from barges on the Mississippi and processing it into finished fuels.

The next owner was John Barrett Jr., an Oklahoman, who landed federal contracts for high-quality fuels.

Much later in the plant’s history, Barrett’s contract operator, Houston-based M&S Petroleum, faced pollution and other allegations from the state environmental regulators and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In 1999, the U.S. District Court in Natchez sentenced the operator’s co-owner, John R. Cooke, to 29 months in prison and $6,000 in fines. Barrett’s part-owner, Donald Mullins, was sentenced to three years probation. The charges involved violation of the federal Clean Water Act and making false statements concerning the release of the carcinogen benzene into the air and into the Mississippi River and Hatcher Bayou.

Former employees also won a judgment, never paid due to the bankruptcy, involving exposure to hazardous chemicals.

Barrett, also a onetime developer of Rainbow Casino, did not face charges. Barrett, an investor in the Riverwalk Casino under construction, is not listed as a principal in the company proposing to restart the refinery.

According to public filings with MDEQ, storm runoff into undeveloped areas would have levels of oil and grease less than 5 milligrams per liter daily, based on similarly permitted tank farm areas.

An additional 72,000 gallons of wastewater from the crude treatment process would be discharged into the Mississippi River. Planned emissions for federally designated pollutants present in the wastewater such as ammonia and hexavalent chromium are limited by permit specifications to federal guidelines.

Since the refinery was built in 1979, before new categories of pollutant levels and definitions were adopted on the federal level, proposed amounts of pollutant discharge were calculated using the best available and practical technology.

OnlineA list of environmental permits issued by the MDEQ Office of Pollution Control can be viewed online at http://opc.deq.state.ms.us/report_public_notice.aspx.