Community members heard directly from David’s Burgers after a letter was sent out to community members that the popular Arkansas chain proposed a slaughter and processing facility.<\/p>\n
“This proposal is basically in my backyard, 0.3 miles behind where I live,” Jacksonville resident Meaghan Fernau said.<\/p>\n
Many in the Jacksonville community were not notified of the 70-plus-acre facility just outside of the city limits. The burger chain plans on processing 10 cattle there a week, but some neighbors who live less than a half mile away from the facility found out on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“So, I found out about two days ago, and I have since started an online petition with Change.org, and I am going to be here every step of the way, trying to make this not happen,” Fernau said.<\/p>\n
While the location of the property isn’t in the city of Jacksonville and is in the unincorporated part of Pulaski County, residents expressed their concerns about the location of the property.<\/p>\n
“I believe that there are many other locations that they can choose that are not within an area that is so concentrated with residential traffic. That’s the problem. I am a big supporter of David’s Burgers. I love business. I love their concept. I love the idea of them trying to bring everything home. I just don’t want it to be done in my backyard,” Fernau said.<\/p>\n
Fernau said that she went to the Thursday meeting to get her questions answered by David’s Burgers themselves but walked away without feeling they were answered. The burger restaurant says that they wanted to address three main concerns they have seen in the community.<\/p>\n
“So, all the waste is going to be collected and stored in 55-gallon drums. Those are kept sealed and refrigerated until they are picked up by a refrigerated truck and taken off. For a third-party rendering company that has nothing to do with David’s wastewater, same thing. Any kind of byproduct, blood, solid materials, those things are caught within a drain,” Kala Strickland, the Vice President of site services for David’s Burgers, said.<\/p>\n
Wastewater was another big concern amongst community members, said that there would be no blood or solid waste that would go into the water system. Community members also expressed their concerns about potential odors from the property.<\/p>\n
“Odor is a big concern, and I understand that. That odor that people are thinking about for large facilities. Those are for large facilities that are slaughtering 15,000 cows a day. We’re doing 10 a week, but the rendering is not happening on site in Jacksonville. Those are going to be shipped off to a different county, so no odor on our side besides a typical farm,” Strickland said.<\/p>\n
THV11 Strickland on what it means to be a good neighbor to the city of Jacksonville and those who live around the 6-thousand-foot slaughterhouse, she said that the proposed project has already made changes with the community in mind.<\/p>\n
“We want to be part of the community. We want to do education tours. We want to partner with local schools and colleges for ag students. We are good neighbors. We live in this community ourselves, so making sure that we pull the entrances off the main road, we put them on southeastern. We push further back out of the road itself, hundreds of feet off the road, just so we can be good neighbors,” Strickland said.<\/p>\n
The project goes in front of the Pulaski County Planning Commission on Tuesday, September 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Community members heard directly from David’s Burgers after a letter was sent out to community members that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[71309,160444,116,118,117,160445,160446],"class_list":["post-403284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-community-members","tag-davids-burgers","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-meaghan-fernau","tag-pulaski-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}