WELLSVILLE – Residents of Wellsville are breathing a little easier.
Until last year, the tranquil town of 2,500 on the western edge of Cache Valley was permeated with a pungent odor from a dairy processing plant that on bad days literally made some people sick to their stomach.
So says Jerry Cokely, a town resident and member of the Committee for a Clean, Safe Wellsville, who for nearly two years has locked horns with Dairy Products Service Inc., which sits like an industrial island surrounded by a residential community in the town eight miles south of Logan.
The problem is believed to be milk-waste products stored in silo-like vats 20 feet across that hold between 40,000 and 50,000 gallons each.
“It smells like a combination of sour milk and dirty diapers,” says Cokely of the odor, adding, “It looks like a witches brew.”
He says the committee was created to deal with two problems: the stench and safety. Because the tanks have exterior ladders on them, “Anybody could get into them — including kids. They could climb in and drown,” says Cokely.
Differences between the town and company began in the spring of 1994, when the state Division of Water Quality fined the town $114,000, claiming the town’s sewer system was discharging more sewage into the Little Bear River than was permitted.
The town in turn blamed part of the problem on the dairy plant, saying an effluent the company was producing from a new processing technique was too dirty and too great a quantity for the town’s system to adequately handle. The result was effluent not properly treated before its discharge into the river.
To spur the company to action, Wellsville threatened to shut off water to the plant in August 1994. The company filed an injunction in 1st District Court to stop the water termination and try to reach an amicable agreement with the town.
“There were a variety of claims made by both sides,” says George Daynes, a Logan attorney for the company. “One was that the only reason the plant was in Wellsville was because it couldn't be built in California, when the reason is because it is near a milk production area.”
In April 1995, the company and town agreed to a stipulation whereby the company would disconnect itself from the town's sewer system and treat its own effluent. It also agreed to pay the town $75,000.
Since then the company has complied with most of the stipulations and the town has completed a $200,000 upgrade to its aging sewer system. The only thing left is for the plant to rid itself of the objectionable smell.
To accomplish that, the company hired an environmental consultant to track down the exact cause. It also has stopped processing whole milk until the problem can be dealt with. That has freshened the air but but also forced the company to idle some workers.
Jerry Carter, the environmental consultant hired by the company, said Monday he has sent samples to laboratories around the country to try to isolate the cause of the smell. He is also giving the city biweekly updates on what is being done.
He says that after an evaluation of the information, the company hopes to strike a deal with the city agreeable to both.
The town's mayor, Ruth Maughn, is encouraged by the plant’s actions and is confident an amicable agreement is on the horizon. Until it is, the city is waiting on renewal of the company’s business license.
“Progress has been made,” she says. "We'll see how long it’s going to take. We're not going to wait around for a year.”
The general manager for Dairy Products, J.M. Robinson, declined comment other than to say present relations between the company and town are “hunky-dory.”
