Mississippi Phosphates in Pascagoula Files Bankruptcy

Pascagoula-based Mississippi Phosphates filed for bankruptcy Monday. The company is a major fertilizer producer that has been plagued with environmental issues over the past few years.

Members of the Cherokee Concerned Citizens Group in Pascagoula believe their chronic health issues are linked to the emissions of Mississippi Phosphates, a fertilizer plant just two blocks away from the neighborhood. Debbie Ashley, a concerned citizen, says, "I would come out here late at night, 10, 10:30 and I would look over in this direction and I’d see just big puff, and I knew they were letting off something, because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky."

Concerned citizen from the neighborhood group, Karen Kilbern, says the residents’ decision at a meeting held last week to move forward with a lawsuit is why Mississippi Phosphates has filed bankruptcy. Kilbern says, "So in that meeting, Mr. Wes Smith was there from Mississippi Phosphates. I believe they’re filing bankruptcy so they can’t have a lawsuit filed against them."

Kilbern says she and the other residents recently asked for a buyout from the company and the other industrial giants in the area, but that would not be possible as the bankruptcy paperwork shows Mississippi Phosphates owes $20 million to creditors. Howard Page of the Steps Coalition says, "They’ve been a company that’s been financially in trouble for quite some time and because they run an operation that if things go wrong can cause harm to people, we’ve always been concerned that they don’t have the money to pay for that harm and don’t have the money to maybe run their operation with the best management practices that such a dangerous operation requires."

Mississippi Phosphates filed chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows companies to stay open while they re-organize its financing, yet there is still no word if the company’s 200 employees are at risk of losing their jobs. Kilbern says their damage to the community is worth the loss.

Kilbern closes, "I would hope that all of this would shut them down. It would be very sad to lose workers and to lose jobs in Mississippi. Yes, 220 people will lose their jobs, however, we’ve got 130 homes in Cherokee Forest that are people dying because of what they’re releasing and they’re not doing anything about it to clean it up."