URBANA (AP) – The days of football fans at the University of Illinois’ Memorial Stadium being greeted by that unpleasant barnyard smell from the university’s farm are nearing an end.

By the beginning of the new football season, the beef and sheep at the South Farms should be moved to new barns and a new $2 million waste management system should be keeping the smell down.

“We asked (the engineers) to develop a low-odor system that could be a good-neighbor type of system,” said Dan Faulkner, professor of animal science with the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. “We’ve worked very hard to make this environmentally friendly.”

The new beef and sheep complex is 2 miles southeast of its present location and is expected to be finished by late August, university officials say.

The new waste handling system, which will be able to hold about 3.6 million gallons, is very different from the way the farm’s manure has been handled for decades. Currently, manure is collected on straw and then spread on nearby fields as fertilizer.

In the new barns, manure will slip through the slotted floor into a pool of water. From there, the slurry is piped into tanks where the solids settle to the bottom.

After the solids are removed, what remains is channeled to more tanks where the settling process is repeated several times. Oxygen also is added to the liquid.

Eventually the waste water is injected directly into the farm fields to provide nitrogen to the soil.

Leftover solids are sent to a composting facility and mixed with leaves and other organic matter. The compost can be used for gardens and farm plots around campus, Faulkner said.