A truck hauling waste for Wayne Farms on its way to the Surry County landfill Monday had a near miss collision with another vehicle on Old U.S. 52 that caused it to spill out, and continue to leak, its smelly cargo over the roadway.
Bobby Koehler said it was one of his Ultimate Environmental haulers that was en route to the landfill with a load of wet chicken feed mixed with bad eggs on Monday when his truck was nearly run off the road by another vehicle. The incident was caught on dashboard camera of his company vehicle.
According to Koehler it shows a red Chevy Truck essentially forcing the Ultimate Environmental truck off the roadway onto the shoulder. The force of that movement caused the load to shift and begin to leak out of the truck, which aligned with a visual inspection of the scene of the spill Wednesday afternoon.
Surry County landfill employee Ricky Hawks said that the spilled load had indeed been quite a scene. He described the mess as a “slurry” of chicken waste that was leaking from the truck arrival. Refusing the load and sending it back out onto the roadway would have only made matters worse, he said.
Koehler said there was nothing special about the load that leaked out nor in the process of hauling it that day. It was the close call accident with the other driver he said which was culprit of the leak.
“This was a normal load,” he said and emphasized there were no chemicals or anything harmful, “it just smelled like crap. I had it on my truck and it got rained on and washed it off.”
The trail is rather hard to miss as it seems to begin in earnest around the intersection of Old U.S. Highway 52 and Woodcreek Drive just south of the Interstate 74 overpass.
In the vicinity of that intersection, a stain that could perhaps best be described as the physical manifestation of the onomatopoeia “splat” is found. From there the trail follows the path of the roadway, right down the center of the lane, before making the right-hand turn onto Hiatt Road.
Before the waste trail turned onto Landfill Road, it passed by Johnson Granite Inc., at 589 Hiatt Road. A pair of employees standing outside the building Wednesday afternoon said Monday’s spill left quite an impression and they were concerned what exactly the waste was, one said they thought it was chicken innards.
One of the workers said she had seen co-workers going out to the parking lot and finding remnants of the spillage on their vehicles. Some of the Johnson Granite employees had gone so far, she said, as attempting to clean off the roadway in front of their building.
The biggest impact to employees there she said had to do with the smell from the chicken waste.
A set of large bay doors that would normally be open to allow air to move through had to be closed as the smell was too much for the workers inside. Apparently, they did a cost benefit analysis and determined working in an enclosed workspace that was significantly hotter was better than having the roasting smell of chicken waste wafting in.
They said the smell was not as bad as it had been earlier in the week, but standing in the late day sun it was hard to miss a familiar scent that was reminiscent of being near one of the county’s many chicken-based operations on one of the more aromatic days.
Sampled at a few different spots along the trail, there was no sticky or tackiness to the stain.
“My boyfriend went to the Surry County dump today in Mount Airy and said there’s some sort of weird spill going down the road leading to it for miles that is the worst thing he’s ever smelled,” a caller to The Mount Airy News advised Monday afternoon.
She went on to say that a trip to the car wash necessitated two runs through to remove the gunk from the underside of the vehicle.
That of course begs the question of who, if anyone, is going to make an attempt to clean up what after 72 or so hours baking in the July sun is a thoroughly cooked through mess on several roadways.
It seems Mother Nature may be tasked with that challenge.
Koehler suggested skipping a trip to the car wash saying the rain forecast for Thursday, with more likely Saturday, would be the best solution to the smelly problem.
Most Popular
Comments / 0