SEDALIA, Mo. — After Tonganoxie, Kansas residents essentially chased Tyson Foods out of Leavenworth County because many were uncomfortable with the city’s hush-hush proposal with the chicken processing company, 41 Action News decided to take a trip to Sedalia, Missouri.
The Tyson processing plant in Sedalia has been a fixture for 25 years. It’s a plant that processes more than a million chickens a week and generates hundreds of thousands of wastewater a day, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
How do residents who live right by the plant feel about it?
We found out. For some, their opinion depends on which way the wind is blowing. Many say it provides great jobs for the community.
But folks in the tiny township of Dresden don’t have a high opinion.
“In a way, it has decreased the value of this neighborhood, but what plant doesn’t?” Dresden resident Dalton Riedl said.
Tyson looms over the modest township of Dresden not even a half mile away.
“This is where I’ve grown up basically,” resident Randy Shumaker said.
Beyond general complaints about the stench, many longtime Dresden folks will tell you the same story.
“These grain trucks go by here 50 miles an hour. It’s just grain dust everywhere. My house – I could dust it and the next thing I know, I’m dusting again,” Shumaker said.
The rumble of grain and chicken trucks is constant and noticeable. Dresden is sandwiched by Tyson’s grain mill on one end and the plant on the other.
“Trucks that come through, they don’t care. Most of them speed,” Dalton Riedl said.
Neighbors complain about traffic. Around 400 to 500 workers are under the plant’s roof at any given time.
But the one thing that gets people going — “The water situation. I’m still on a well and half the time it’s down and we don’t get the water we should have. It’s murky,” Shumaker said.
Many Dresden folks are still on a well water system.
“You figure when PSI comes in they are using approximately a hundred thousand gallons of water just to clean the plant,” Riedl says.
Tyson Foods as a whole used 31.36 billion gallons of water in 2016, up from 30.31 billion gallons in 2015 and 29.31 billion gallons in 2014. The company recently assured its commitment to using less water.
It’s not just residents wondering where the water is. There’s also an underlying fear about what’s in it.
Tyson Foods doesn't have a stellar environmental record.
In 2003, Tyson pled guilty to 20 felony violations of the Clean Water Act after the Sedalia plant continuously dumped untreated wastewater into a Lamine River tributary. The company paid $7.5 million in fines. That came despite multiple citations, warnings, administrative orders, court injunctions, fines and federal search warrants.
A fire hydrant leak at the Sedalia plant in 2012 caused 26,000 gallons of potable water to flow into the Muddy Creek. Around 100,000 fish died of chlorine toxicity. Tyson paid a fine $2,000 to the Pettis County School Fund. The state fined Tyson $3,367.71 for staff and equipment costs and the value of the organisms killed.
The Missouri Department of Conservation told 41 Action News the fish were small and mostly minnows, and that Tyson cleaned it up quickly.
According to Tyson’s 2016 sustainability report, the company exceeded its wastewater permit 68 times in 2016, down from 134 times in 2014.
The company’s sustainability report also shows:
Total Reportable Chemical Releases:
- 2013 – 21
- 2014 – 21
- 2015 – 11
“I used to fish down there at Muddy Creek and I wouldn't dare go in there and catch a fish now,” Shumaker said.
Tyson is Pettis County’s top employer. The Sedalia plant employs around 1,600 people. Surrounding farmers grow for Tyson or have sold land to the company.
Terry Trester lives with his friend in a house directly across the street from Tyson. Trester said that property was there before Tyson moved into town.
“I can’t think of anybody that has an issue with it. I mean, I’ve got a lot of friends that work over at Tyson. It’s good money, good benefits. You get used to the smell after a while,” Trester said.
Trester says most times he smells fried chicken, and other times he smells the odors from the rendering plant that he likens to a “landfill.”
After the Tonganoxie outrage to a proposed Tyson plant just south of the city, other Kansas communities, like Wichita, seem to be chomping at the bit to let Tyson build a nest.
The Sedalia Chamber of Commerce said it was “too bad” that Tonganoxie pushed Tyson out, hailing the company as a “great group to work for.”
“If I got one thing to say, I mean let them come there. Let them come up there and set up shop. Get your jobs and you’ll get used to the smell after a while,” Trester encouraged.
Maybe except for Dresden residents.
“They got more money than we do, so I guess we lose,” Shumaker said.
But if you ask Dresden residents why they won’t leave, they say it's because Dresden is home.
