A worker at Percival Scientific Inc. in Perry reported a sickening workplace stench to the Perry Police Department about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.
According to a Perry Police Department report, the caller claimed people nearby were “dumping something in a field, making people at Percival sick.” The caller said he was “not sure what it is.”
An officer responded to the scene of the reported stench and found a “white substance on the ground,” and “the odor was strong.”
A Percival Scientific worker who experienced the odor said he saw a farmer pulling a honeywagon and driving back and forth across the hay field between the Percival Scientific Inc. and Hy-Line International plants in Perry. The field is owned by Perry Economic Development Inc. (PEDI), developers of the Perry Industrial Park.
“It wasn’t hog manure,” the Percival worker said. “Now whether it was ground up chicken guts — I don’t know what they do with the birds, if they grind them up — or if it was eggs or what, but you have never smelled anything like it in your life.”
As the field lay directly north of the Hy-Line International facility in Perry, the responding police officer inquired at the Hy-Line International offices in Dallas Center. A company spokesperson said she “did not think it was their people, but she would check to see if there was dumping out there and what the substance was that was sprayed in the field,” the police report said.
“I wound up wearing a mask,” the Percival worker said. “There’s people that went into the breakroom and the bathrooms that would not come out. The smell was that bad. The DNR come and looked. I don’t know what they decided, but they were called and came to see if there was any DNR violations that happened.”
Bryan Bunton, an environmental specialist in the Iowa DNR Field Services and Compliance Bureau, was reportedly the DNR representative who inspected the field. Bunton did not return calls for comment Friday.
Percival Scientific Inc. President and CEO Gary Wheelock also did not return calls for comment Friday.
“I’m not going to say anything,” said Hy-Line International public relations spokesperson Kari Thomas, who referred ThePerryNews.com to Tom Jorgensen in the egg company’s legal department. Jorgensen did not return calls for comment Friday.
According to the Perry Police Department report, Ryan Wearmouth, a Panora farmer who grows hay on the field through an arangement with the PEDI, made contact with the Perry Police Department about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and said “liquid egg had been dumped on a field.”
Deb Lucht, president of the PEDI, said group members addressed the problem with the farmer and with Percival Scientific Inc. management as soon as PEDI became aware of it.
“They are not supposed to be putting stuff on the fields out there,” Lucht said Friday, “so we just kind of brought it to their attention so it won’t be done again in the future. I think there was a miscommunication with the farmer that’s farming the field and what they’re supposed to be doing out there. As far as I know it’s been addressed. It was not any chemicals or anything like that.”
Richard Jones, a PEDI board member, said “the person who takes the hay off that piece of property had someone haul some animal waste onto the hay field as fertilizer, and it was just really stout, and the wind was blowing from the south and affected Percival.”
Jones said a few phone calls quickly clarified the situation.
“We talked to the farmer,” he said. “He said that he’d done this a couple of times, and it just happened that this particular product was a little stronger than the others, but it was all taken care of, no problem.”
According to the police report, Wearmouth said “they were going to spray the field with water” Wednesday afternoon to cut the stench, but Wednesday night’s 2-inch rain in the Perry area might have saved them the trouble.
“It was gone the next morning when it rained,” Jones said, “so there’s no problem.”
