Company promises to close ‘organic residuals’ lagoon causing stench in Fort Smith

The smell hanging over Fort Smith the past few weeks is the result of a cleanup in the Arkansas River bottoms in Crawford County and should soon be coming to an end. The smell overpowering much of Fort Smith comes from an area in the river bottoms where food processing companies’ “organic residuals” have been “lagooned,” noted a media release from the City of Fort Smith.

“(Those organic residuals) from time to time, emitted a bad smell that wafted across neighborhoods of Fort Smith. It’s been unusually intense the last several days as the new landowner removes the residuals and prepares them for removal. The clean-up will culminate in the lagoons being closed permanently, so intermittent faint odors will no longer plague residents at various times of year,” the release said.

Fort Smith Mayor George McGill contacted Jason Golden, general manager of Denali Water Solutions, regarding the smell.

“The issue is being resolved,” McGill said. “The lagoons are being drained and cleaned. Soon, it will be going away forever.”

Golden told McGill in a letter Friday (Feb. 1) the odors were from the work Denali Water Solutions was conducting, not from the neighboring sod farm in the river bottoms. Denali Water Solutions recycles organic residuals for food processors that produce “nutrient-rich organic residuals that cannot enter the municipal wastewater system,” Golden said in the letter. “These organics residuals are excellent all-natural fertilizers. We pick up the residuals from their plants and give them to farmers as eco-friendly fertilizers.”

Golden said during times when farmers cannot spread the materials on their fields, the residuals are stored in gigantic tanks or lagoons.

“Depending on certain factors (temperature, time, residual makeup), the material can get odorous,” he said.

Denali purchased a company that provides similar recycling in 2017. At that time, it also purchased a lagoon located between Highway 59 and Hollis Lake in Crawford County that is filled with these residuals.

“We knew we were going to have to clean it out and close it permanently and specifically chose the month of January because we knew it would stink and there would be less people outside. Further, the winds typically blow to the east at this time of year, away from Fort Smith,” Golden said.

Work on the lagoon began Jan. 9.

The work is lawful and permitted by state environmental authorities, McGill said after numerous complaints from the community led him to contact state authorities who in turn put him in touch with the landowner conducting the clean-up project.

“It is being done now, during a colder month, because fewer people spend time outdoors where there’s no escape from the smell. During warmer or summer months, more residents spend longer periods of time outdoors, enjoying recreational activities, and the intense aroma would prove even more obtrusive and inconvenient,” the city’s media release said.

After McGill reached out, Denali agreed to halt operations Jan. 31 in order for the “stench to die down,” the release said.

Clean-up is expected to resume early next week when winds are expected to shift so the odor will not blow toward Fort Smith. Completion of the cleanup is expected to take two days, Golden said. The company intends to close the lagoon at that time, meaning the pungent odors will be a thing of the past.