By Peter Galuszka

Is there something stinky going on in Portsmouth?

It’s a question that has suddenly wafted up when residents of the port city learned that the Virginia Ports Authority has been in secret talks with Canadian-owned PCS Phosphate to put in a plant to melt sulfur pellets for fertilizer production.

The same project had been pitched for Morehead City, N.C. but was shouted down by a lively environmentalist coalition, which sparked a controversy that reached the office of Tarheel Gov. Beverly Perdue. PCS Phosphate operates one of the world’s largest phosphate mines in coastal Beaufort County, which is an easy barge trip away from either Portsmouth or Morehead City.

It’s a story near and dear to me since it was one of the first I covered as a cub reporter at the Washington (N.C.) Daily News back in my college-day summers of 1971 and 1972. The big mine, then owned by TexasGulfSulphur, had been in operation since the mid-1960s and had created all sorts of ecological challenges for the beautiful coastal plains and swamps of Beaufort County about 120 miles south of Tidewater. Water kept filling up the huge surface mine pit, so TexasGulf drilled wells to force water from an aquifer away from the pit. That dried up homeowners’ wells for miles and prompted years of lawsuits.

Later, when French oil giant Elf Aquitaine ended up owning the mine, which makes fertilizer products, the mine got the largest-ever fine at the time from North Carolina air pollution control officials. Canada-based Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan eventually ended up buying the operation and owns PCS Phosphate.

With a history like this, it’s small wonder Portsmouthians are up in arms about a sulfur melting plant which will only employ about 10 people. Company officials insist it won’t stink up anything.

But then, Portsmouth, an industrial town that hosts the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, has always been a touchstone for unwanted industrial projects. In the 1970s, an oil refinery was proposed by some independent oilmen but was never built. In 2007, Portsmouth pushed Chesapeake into ending an ethanol plant planned across the city line. That may have been a good thing since the U.S. has too many ethanol plants.

The VPA has come under criticism for keeping the sulfur project under wraps for as long as it could. After all, isn’t the VPA a public agency (“quasi” public agency)? The plant would be built close to nice old neighborhoods that Portsmouth has labored for years to revive. It would be only one mile from Norfolk’s waterfront that also has plants for a new revival after a renaissance in the 1980s.

Funny how these plans seem to come out faster in a more open state like North Carolina.