Word: beetly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
More than a year ago, the burghers of Hannêche in eastern Belgium began complaining about "that awful smell" emanating from the rusty vats stored in an abandoned sugar-beet factory. Cats died from it. Trees shed their leaves. Grass turned brown. One of the stored vats burst, and the stench, rather like the smell of decomposing rats, brought still more complaints from the village of Burdinne, six miles away. Only last month, finally, did the ministry of labor, which deals with environmental problems, get around to investigating. It found that the vats contained between...
...college would be as big as any industry." With other local businessmen, Kosman raised $5,463,000 and hired a president who flew around the country to recruit students. When the college opened in 1965, one Chamber of Commerce official crowed, "We are not just a sugar-beet and cattle-raising town any more." But Kosman admits, "We were short of cash from the word...
...source of Hartford's stench is two lagoons to the west of the town. They were bulldozed out by Libby, McNeill & Libby, when the company found that the discharge from its big beet-processing plant at Hartford was polluting the local creek. The idea was that the two lagoons would serve as a cesspool area, where wastage could be aerated and treated until it was pollution-free...
...Libby wastes lying stagnant in the lagoons often smell like rotten meat. In the words of one irate citizen, the odor is reminiscent of "pig manure." Even so, the smells are seasonal, and (to most people) bearable. But last summer's wet weather produced an unusually large beet crop-and the worst smells ever. Fed up, 100 townspeople have now formed S.M.E.L.L.S. (Someone Must Eliminate Libby Lagoon Smells...
Libby, meanwhile, is doing its best to snuff out the odor. It has used ammonium nitrate and other chemicals in attempts to neutralize the gases that cause the offensive beet smell. Enzymes and aerators have been put to work to help reduce the anaerobic bacteria that produce the gas. Still, the smells persist. Moans Libby Plant Manager Kenneth Schessler: "We get blamed even when there's three feet of ice on the lagoons...