Asked for an update on finding a resolution to the stench regularly emanating from a city sewage lagoon on the other side of the Natchez Trace, Kosciusko Mayor Jimmy Cockroft said that — while a permanent solution is yet to be found — numerous parties are now working together to find that solution.
“It still smells, but we had a good meeting on Friday with Prairie Farms and some of their people and we’ve all agreed to work closely together, including finding out what else might be coming in there that we might have overlooked,” Cockroft said Monday. “It may take months to find a concrete solution, but we’re all committed to figuring it out.”
There have been three meetings to discuss the issue since the first of the year and Cockroft said he been speaking with various departments within the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality on a weekly basis, including permitting, municipal, compliance and operator training.
Representing the city at Friday’s meeting were the mayor, Howard Sharkey of the Waste Water department and City Engineer Christian Gardner. Prairie Farms’ representatives included their Director of Operations, Continuous Improvement and EHS Troy Ferguson and Plant Manager James McBride, according to Cockroft. Also present was observer Mike McIntosh, an environmental operations trainer from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the mayor said.
While there have always been occasional odor problems nearby during weather changes, the mayor said the “obnoxious odor” extending further out for more prolonged periods of time started in the spring of 2018. It was then that the city purchased new aerators in an attempt to control the smell.
“The first really bad time where we had obnoxious odor was in the Spring of 2018 when we went from cold to warmer days,” he said, “but we can’t put fingers on anything that changed.”
The “obnoxious odor,” the mayor said, is caused by waste stream contents in the lagoon that have a high BOD — biological oxygen demand. They are contents that reduce the oxygen levels in the lagoon, causing the odor.
“Milk is high BOD, and of the 250,000 gallons that go into the lagoon daily, about half or a little better is from Prairie Farms,” Cockroft said.
That does not mean, however, that the waste coming from the dairy processor is the only source of BODs or the defiitive and sole cause of the odor problem, he said.
“There are other businesses that have oil and grease — like restaurants and mechanic shops — that could contribute to it,” said Cockroft, noting that those contents also have a high BOD. “We are going to look upstream to see what other contributors there are, knowing that they (Prairie Farms) are a major contributor.”
Cockroft said Prairie Farms’ outflow testing typically indicates a fluctuation between 2,000 and 4,000 BODs, though there was one recent spike officials attribute to a testing glitch.
The Star-Herald was unable to obtain comment from representatives of Prairie Farms.
“They (Prairie Farms) may need to get it (BODs) down or treat it before it gets to the lake,” the mayor said, but until an upcoming wastewater stream analysis is complete, specific potential solutions are not being discussed.
During the next couple of weeks, Cockroft said the city is having Enviro-Labs of Starkville take and test composite samples from various potential contributors of BODs via area manholes.
“We need to know why, what we can do now, and how we can prevent it,” said Cockroft of the odor problem.
In the meantime, with recent rains adding volume to the lagoon, the city has installed a secondary bypass pump to more quickly move sewage from the problematic lagoon down to another city lagoon south of town. It is from that secondary location, which acts as a holding cell, that the contents are discharged into the Yockanookany River based on what is allowed by the city’s permit from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the mayor said.
