Yesterday just after 3:30, I spotted the thick column of smoke, a gigantic double-helix twisting out of the trees. I left from Hwy. 53 near Braselton navigating with the rising black cloud as my northern point. Not surprisingly, I ended up following the train tracks to the fire in Talmo:
Talmo's just a little jerkwater turn-of-the-century town whose fortunes declined with the railroads.
I guessed there was a major accident on the four-lane on Hwy. 129 into Gainesville. Perhaps some congeries of racing tractor trailers had caught on fire. I knew there was a school in that direction as well. But all the emergency personnel from Jackson and Hall Counties were congregating in the parking lot of Agri-Cycle, what seemed to be a nursery operating out of an old factory inside the Talmo city limits. They were standing around doing nothing.
I followed the road out to 129, where it becomes two lanes, and took the left to Gainesville. There it was, a castle of crimson fire behind the trees. I assumed a house was burning on Talmo Farm. From the amount of flame and smoke, it had to be Wayne Miller's mansion swiftly incinerating on the other side of the creek. I was wrong. There are no houses over there.
Ashley Cox at the Gainesville Times has the story in today's edition. The source of the fire was waste-treatment lagoons filled with cooking grease:
About two weeks ago, the state Environmental Protection Division ordered Agri-Cycle to stop taking waste, giving the plant 30 days to submit a plan for closure.
The plant decomposes grease and poultry waste and then uses a land-application waste treatment system, or sprayfields, to dispose of the waste on company property.
It has had a number of noncompliance issues with the EPD over the past two years and has been cited for contaminating nearby Allen Creek with fecal matter and E. coli, building two ponds without state permission and accepting domestic waste for treatment.
It was unclear Wednesday whether the ponds that were on fire were the ones that had been built without permission.
Just before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Mickey Grindle, Miller's neighbor, was on Miller's property working on a tractor.
He said he saw a man drive down the hill on Agri-Cycle's land on an all-terrain
He said he saw a man drive down the hill on Agri-Cycle's land on an all-terrain vehicle, then leave shortly after, which was when the fire started.
vehicle, then leave shortly after, which was when the fire started.
"I'm assuming he started the fire," Grindle said.
At first, Grindle said he thought workers were burning brush from grading work they had been doing, but then he realized the flames were coming from another source.
Residents seemed suspicious of the timing of the fire, and several said they thought it had to do with the EPD's order for Agri-Cycle to close down.
Talmo Mayor Larry Wood said the fire was "very interesting" with all the other issues surrounding the plant recently.
Miller had his own theory.
"They're burning their evidence," he said.
Nobody from the plant was present during the incident, and its parking lot was nearly empty.
"All their trucks are conveniently gone," Miller said as he drove by.
I'm still looking for the EPD documents on the company. I know that Agri-Cycle was taking nitrate-compound waste from the Tyson processing plant in Cumming. More on Zurix Water, the apparent owner of Agri-Cycle, to come, along with some better pictures. The waste-nutrient paradigm from the Zurix website is below.
Talmo's just a little jerkwater turn-of-the-century town whose fortunes declined with the railroads.
