Fort Morgan, Colo., residents are not happy with how the just-finished sugarbeet campaign ran at Western Sugar Cooperative, and they let the company's officials know it May 23 at a community meeting.
This campaign was the first one using new, upgraded processing equipment, and it both took longer than usual to complete and yielded less sugar product and more bad smells than usual.
Those facts were not in question by the Western Sugar officials who the community meeting, which is a twice-a-year requirement of the conditional use permit granted to the company by the Morgan County commissioners. The Western Sugar factory is under Morgan County's jurisdiction because the property holding the factory and its facilities is located in the county and outside Fort Morgan city limits.
The Western Sugar officials - including CEO Rodney Perry, Vice President and General Counsel Heather Luther and Fort Morgan Plant Manager Terry Tahal - found a packed room Tuesday night at the Morgan County Administration Building.
The estimated 70 to 80 people who attended the meeting included a mix of local residents, county officials, current and former Fort Morgan city officials, health care workers, business owners, retired sugar factory workers and others.
Foremost, they seemed to be upset about the unpleasant odor that has hung around the city far stronger and longer than usual.
That odor was mainly due to not as much sugar getting pulled out of the beets and it going into the water pulled off of them during processing. That then allows bacteria to eat the sugar in the water and then let off the gases that create the bad smell.
It working out that way this year was not good for anyone, but it was due to a mixture of new equipment, some of which did not work as expected, and having a fair number of new and inexperienced workers at the plant, according to the Western Sugar officials.
Source: www.fortmorgantimes.com