JEFFERSONVILLE —
Officials at Krunchers! spent part of last week cleaning up after potato and tortilla chips and seasoning were washed into a Mill Creek tributary during a fire at the Jeffersonville factory.
Andrea Bartman, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania-based parent company of Krunchers! said all of what was spilled during the Aug. 22 incident was biodegradable and the company has hired two environmental management firms to clean up the spill. At one point, even the city was helping with clean up.
Maj. Mike McCutcheon, fire marshal for the Jeffersonville Fire Department, said the department was called to the Krunchers! plant along Peaceley Street on Aug. 22, after a semi trailer outside the plant containing discarded chips that didn’t pass the company’s quality control process caught fire.
The chips were discarded after cooking oil got too hot, and McCutcheon said the hot oil is what caused a smoldering fire inside the trailer. The fire department was called and in the midst of hosing the fire down, the contents of the trailer were washed onto the ground.
Bartman said chips that don’t pass quality control are deemed not fit for human consumption and are put into the trailer which sits in the company’s parking lot until it’s full. It’s later hauled away and used as animal feed.
Bartman said company officials thought they cleaned up the mess, which was mostly in the parking lot. But a few days later, neighbors began to notice an odor.
Kaycee Stone, 21, said her parents live right beside the tributary creek and began to notice the smell the week after the fire.
Stone said they found an orange and brown sludge in the creek when they went to inspect it last Friday.
“[The smell] was pretty bad. It seemed worse at night,” Stone said. “It was pretty pungent, made you want to hold your nose.”
She said chips and other byproducts could be seen in the creek. Initially, the city was called to the scene.
“There was a whole slew of potato chips on the creek,” said Len Ashack, Jeffersonville’s Utility Director. He noted that a city vacuum truck hauled away 30 cubic feet of debris — three truck loads — during a four-hour clean up effort.
“We did it to kind of keep the odor down,” he said, but noted the responsibility ultimately fell on Krunchers! to have it cleaned up.
Bartman said crews at the plant didn’t notice that product had spilled into the creek until well after the fire. The smell, she said, was likely rotting food.
Bartman declined to comment on how much the spill had cost the company. However, she noted it is working with state and local regulators and no long-term environment effects are expected.
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