State
City, Poultry Plant Work Together
North Mississippi Herald
WATER VALLEY – After months of work, aldermen voted unanimously to move forward with a plan to resolve lingering environmental issues at Water Valley Poultry, LLC, that jeopardize the future of the plant.
The vote came in the Nov. 6 city meeting and authorized the mayor to negotiate a new agreement with the plant to pay costs incurred to manage the cell at the city’s wastewater treatment plant where wastewater is initially discharged from the plant for treatment. The vote also included approval from aldermen to renew the wastewater treatment permit from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) allowing the same levels of processing waste as the prior permit that has been expired since 2015.
Although not directly part of the city’s negotiations, the agreement also hinges on an initial half-million dollar investment by Water Valley Poultry to address drainage issues and other infrastructure related to wastewater treatment at the plant.
Speaking at the Nov. 6 meeting, plant manager Stacy Kesler explained that his company has already signed an order with MDEQ to make these improvements or face penalties. Much of the work is also on a tight timeline, as Kesler told aldermen that the agreement his company entered into with MDEQ requires infrastructure work to be completed in stages, with deadlines looming.
Mayor Donald Gray explained that the resolution follows dialogue between the city and plant officials in recent months, including a meeting a week earlier.
“Kagan can lead this, we met last Wednesday,” Gray added, as Ward 1 Alderman Kagan Coughlin provided an overview of the necessary steps that need to happen almost simultaneously.
“I have spent a good amount of time on the phone with the folks that own the poultry plant and the folks they are working with to improve their infrastructure,” Coughlin said before outlining each step. “There is a history of trust issues between the city and poultry plant. It sounds like we could be in a position to find solid ground and work together and move forward,” Coughlin said.
The Lagoon
Commonly called the lagoon, the city’s wastewater treatment plant is located in the south end of town, between Hwy. 7 and South Main, and receives the most public scrutiny when things aren’t working right and odor becomes a problem.
Coughlin explained that currently the poultry plant is managing the lagoon with city oversight. He said there are times when odor is a problem and the city has trouble correcting the problem.
“We need to figure out both how to manage that and the relationship around that,” Coughlin said about the lagoon. He also said there was a previous lease agreement between the city and plant that defined the plant’s obligations to manage the cell.
“That lease was with an entity that was sold, twice over. And that lease expired in 2015. That is unclear for anybody,” Coughlin explained, referring to ownership changes in recent years at the poultry plant.
“The owners of the poultry plant expressed an interest in getting a bill, as opposed to having to figure it out. They do not have anybody on staff anyone who knows how to manage a wastewater lagoon,” Coughlin continued, adding that he has reached out to an Arkansas company that works with other poultry plants to manage wastewater treatment.
“They have given us a quote that is a little less than what the poultry plant is spending today. And their results on treating a lagoon are much better than the results we have been getting, both as a city and the poultry plant,” Coughlin explained.
The DEQ Permit and
Infrastructure Improvements
Coughlin said that in conversations with MDEQ, the input was that if the lagoon is properly managed, the amount of processing waste will be in compliance with the limits in the wastewater permit. In the past, Water Valley Poultry has been cited by MDEQ when wastewater samples that detect the level of processing waste have exceeded permit levels.
After the wastewater permit from MDEQ expired in 2015, city officials had proposed tighter restrictions on the amount of processing waste in a new wastewater permit. The vote by alderman on Nov. 6 would approve the limits in the previous permit, approval that is contingent on the lagoon management agreement and infrastructure improvements.
The infrastructure improvements will also help alleviate compliance issues with the processing waste because the storm water also flows into the plant’s onsite treatment system.
“All of our storm water, absolutely everything, we treat. It goes straight into our treatment system,” Kesler explained, adding that heavy rain enhances treatment problems.
Also problematic are the spikes in the amount of processing waste in the discharge from the plant, which Coughlin explained account for the wastewater exceeding the permit levels. One culprit in this problem was heavy storm water runoff that overwhelms the plant’s onsite system. Coughlin explained the infrastructure improvements will improve both the quantity and quality of wastewater, helping eliminate the spikes.
Earlier Dialogue
A September visit by plant officials marked the first dialogue during a city board meeting when the owner of the plant, Mona Nicholas, Kesler and others questioned the city’s rate increase for industrial sewage and water usage.
Nicholas explained that the rate increase, implemented by aldermen in August comes at a tough time for the plant due to proposed tariffs with China.
“We had some progress last year, but since May we have had a huge fallback because of tariff wars,” Nicholas explained during the September meeting. She also explained that China had purchased almost 90 percent of the chickens processed at the local plant, spent hens that were egg layers. She said that the domestic market for the processed chicken is primarily for dog food because the meat is tough and the entire chicken processing industry was experiencing an economic downturn.
Nicholas explained the 60s-era plant was antiquated and needed work when they got it.
“They are trying to do the best with what they have and are trying to keep the plant open,” Nicholas told aldermen. She also told the group that a Jackson-based engineering firm had been hired to help with the infrastructure and MDEQ compliance issues.
Nicholas told aldermen that her company pays almost $450,000 annually for city services including water, wastewater treatment and electricity.
“We feel like we contribute a lot to the community. I know we have had a bad history in the past. I took over about four years ago and am very new to this, Nicholas continued. “We really want to be a good neighbor, I know the biggest complaint is that we haven’t been a good neighbor a lot of times. We want to stay open, we feel an obligation to the community and our employees. Financially this has not been a money-making business, we are hoping to turn it into one if we clean it up and reduce some of our overhead,” she added.
“We do realize that we have good water rates,” Nicholas told aldermen back in September, explaining it wasn’t an issue of relocating to another community for better utility rates.
“We are not going anywhere else, it’s not like we are going to shut down and go somewhere else to get a better rate. Basically if we shut down, we shut down,” she said.
Although aldermen didn’t roll back the rate hikes for water and sewer, her appearance marked a turning point for relations between the city and company as negotiations got underway for resolving the environmental issues that jeopardize the company.
Speaking after the November meeting, Coughlin reiterated that one of the biggest challenges the company faces is the decision to invest in the plant to remain open during this economic downturn for the industry.
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