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Synagro closes its doors in the Shoals?

By Christie Ileto - bio | email

LEIGHTON, AL (WAFF) - After more than a year and a half of spreading human waste as fertilizer in Northwest Alabama, Synagro Technologies has shut down.

WAFF 48 News went to Synagro Technologies after reports of a slow in production, and just from outside the locked gates, there were no trucks in sight.

After calling the business number in the phone book, there was no answer or answering machine.

Synagro Technologies sits abandoned, barren and locked to the public after once being an active facility, fully stocked with dump trucks.

Steve Johnson works just down the road from the plant, and said he was surprised to see a decline in production.

"The odor has dissipated and the flies have really died down in the last week or so," Johnson said.

It's an odor Paula Waldrep said she became all too familiar with at her diner.

"Even through they would shower and things before they came in to get their food, they would have that smelling stuff on their boots; it smelled really bad," Waldrep said as she prepared her customers' food.

WAFF 48 learned the company is named in a civil lawsuit in Russellville, Franklin County citing negligence.

Yet, there's still no official notification of what stopped production at the Leighton facility.

Just a couple months ago, if you were standing in front of Synagro, you'd be nearly suffocated with the odor coming from the treated human waste.

Now locks are all that remain on this fence, and a community wondering if the negatives effects go far beyond an odor.

"I believe that we could have some residual effects from what has been distributed in the past," said Colbert County Commissioner Roger Creekmore, who has worked tirelessly trying to get more regulation on the company. "We find that it's much more dangerous than we ever imagined," he said.

Both Colbert and Franklin counties have adopted State Senator Roger Bedford's bill to allow residents to vote in 2010 on whether or not they want to keep the plant in the area.

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