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February 7, 2006EditorialIt's time to put an end to a cherry plant messFor years, the Williamsburg Receiving and Storage fruit processing plant has lived a seemingly charmed life.Despite a series of wastewater spills and releases, ongoing complaints from neighbors about odor problems and a history of environmental violations, the plant always seems to hang in there. Despite the plant's record, Grand Traverse County's Economic Development Corp. loaned it more than $280,000 to help fund a plant expansion. Two years into the loan, the plant wasn't making payments but was still in business. Things came to a head during a windstorm in November, when more than a million gallons of waste liquids spilled from a storage lagoon. That followed a rising tide of complaints about odors from neighbors a mile or more away. In November, DEQ officials termed the odor "overwhelming." The state attorney general's office filed suit Monday, alleging the company has violated the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act. Meanwhile, WRS owner Chris Hubbell has entered into a contract with Grand Traverse County to start getting rid of the offending liquid waste. But a similar deal with Ludington fell apart two years ago. WRS must stop stinking up the neighborhood, get rid of the waste stored on site and comply with state environmental regulations that every other cherry processor must follow. The plant was to have started shipping 10,000-gallon batches of wastewater to Grand Traverse County's septage treatment plant, from which it would flow to the main wastewater treatment plant on Boardman Lake. Even that looks like a deal for WRS. The county charges 12 cents a gallon for treating septage waste, 18 cents for high-strength waste from grease traps. It's charging WRS less than 6 cents a gallon, though similar WRS waste was rejected by a Ludington wastewater plant two years ago. Hubbell says problems started four years ago when the plant expanded in order to keep maraschino cherry processing jobs here in Michigan. He says a processing system designed by a consultant failed to work. That's a bad break. But instead of fixing the problem, WRS just kept storing more and more waste on site, until it reached a peak of almost 5 million gallons in November. Enough is enough. For WRS's sake and the sake of the cherry growers who depend on the plant, the new disposal plan better work. For the sake of their long-suffering neighbors, who barricade themselves inside their homes during odor attacks, if the plan doesn't work, this must the last go-round. No more chances.
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