NATCHEZ — Adams County’s industrial recruiters are seeking to have squatters evicted from the former International Paper site.

But evicting the IP squatters will take more than just having the law show up and tell them to move on. These squatters have four legs, are covered in scales and like to hang out just below the water.

Adams County Road Manager Robbie Dollar said three — or maybe four — alligators have taken up residence in the retaining lagoons at the shuttered industrial site’s water treatment facility.

“I guess it is home for them now that they are in there,” Dollar said. “We have seen them out there since the purchase of the property, and they have been out there since before the county purchased the property from Rentech.”

The county purchased the property in August 2013 in order to market the 478-acre plot and its water treatment plant to industrial prospects.

Adams County Board of Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said the alligators on the property have not been an issue to date, but officials with Natchez Inc. have requested the animals be removed from the area.

“It is more of a safety concern for when (Natchez Inc. Executive Director Chandler Russ) takes industrial prospects out to the site to look at it,” Grennell said.

The Mississippi Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has retrieved alligators from the property before, Dollar said.

One alligator was removed last Sunday, and two more were captured during the week, he said.

Ricky Flynt, who manages the Mississippi Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ alligator program, said he wasn’t familiar with the Adams County case, but removing nuisance animals from industrial sites wouldn’t be outside the department’s normal operations.

“If it has been out of working capacity and vacant, then certainly alligators can take up residence in just about any place that holds water, as long as there is ample food items to sustain them,” he said.

Grennell said he doesn’t know what the alligators may be eating that keeps them happy in the lagoon, but he suspects they moved into the area during the high water event of 2011.

“The western part of the IP property goes under water when the river rises, and as long as the river doesn’t get to the elevation that it was several years ago, I don’t think it will be a problem again,” he said.