Meat Processing Waste Creates a Big Stink
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 [...]