By Loring Bullard, OS Schoolcraft Past President

Citizens in southwest Missouri were recently locked in battle with a company from Arkansas, Denali Waste Solutions, that spread sludge from waste lagoons serving meat processing facilities located in northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri.

Denali was sued by neighbors for terrible odors arising from land application of sludge from a lagoon that nearby resident Valerie Steele called a “cesspool of rotting flesh.” For the last several years, Denali had been spreading sludge from two lagoons in southwest Missouri on about 20,000 acres of farmland. In 2022, the company dumped 36 truckloads of sludge, 165,000 gallons, a few days ahead of heavy rains, contaminating a neighbor’s land and causing pollution of a nearby waterway. Missouri DNR personnel saw sludge “covering vegetation in the fields.”

One problem was that the waste company operated under the authority of the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board, since its waste products were intended as a “fertilizer” for farmland. But this material was nothing like the commercial fertilizers we see in bags at the farm stores. It was composed not only of blood and animal parts, but could also contain cleaning chemicals from meat processing or antibiotics and pharmaceuticals from animal raising. The Fertilizer Board required fertilizer sources to be properly labeled and tied to specific production sites, but the mixing of wastes from different lagoons violated that rule. Further, in 2023 the Board said it lacked authority over Denali because the waste was given away, not sold as fertilizer.

Southwest Missouri Sludge Lagoon

Steele, leading the charge for local landowners against Denali, urged the Missouri state legislature to address the problem. Dirk Deaton, a state representative from Noel, heard their concerns and worked with other local legislators to get a new bill introduced. Earlier this year, in a break with its pro-agribusiness tradition, the Missouri legislature passed a law requiring meat processor waste lagoons to be permitted by Missouri DNR. Denali had to empty two problem lagoons and take the waste back to Arkansas for treatment. DNR was directed to develop design standards and rules for spreading sludge from the lagoons. Not surprisingly, a Denali spokesman said new rules would add “excessive and unnecessary costs” and have “negative effects on the state’s economy and business.”

And the story doesn’t end there. Denali will no doubt look for the places with the least stringent rules to do their dirty business.

Sources: Missouri Independent, Feb. 29, 2024; St. Louis Today, “Denali to Stop Spreading Meatpacking Wastes in Rural Missouri,” Feb. 1, 2014; Drew Holt, personal interview, July 31, 2024.