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Morinville processor flips switch on odour control system

Morinville doesn’t stink so badly now. Champion Pet Foods, the notorious source of the town’s foul odour, officially flipped the switch on a new $500,000 odour suppression system last Friday.

Morinville doesn’t stink so badly now.

Champion Pet Foods, the notorious source of the town’s foul odour, officially flipped the switch on a new $500,000 odour suppression system last Friday.

The addition of the new technology comes after years of complaints to the town and about a year of discussion with town representatives. The system should achieve an 80 per cent reduction in the odour level, said Champion president and CEO Frank Burdzy.

“We’re certainly very hopeful that people understand we’re still in a rural community and we’re still a manufacturing organization so to expect that anything would be 100 per cent would be difficult, but we’re doing everything we possibly can,” he said.

With the town’s help, Champion scoured the globe for the best technology available, Burdzy said. He noted that 80 per cent of the company’s employees live within nasal range of the facility.

“We’re very tied in with the community from a business perspective but on a very personal level as well. We want to be a very good corporate citizen and do what we can,” he said.

The plant has long been a source of complaints to the town but the griping really began to escalate about a year ago, said Mayor Lloyd Bertschi.

He works at RV City, which is in the same industrial park where Champion is based and knows first hand the effect of the emissions.

“When the wind is blowing the wrong direction it has made it very difficult,” Bertschi said. “Hopefully that’s better for all the businesses in the industrial park as well as for the people in the community.”

The town will provide Champion $60,000 in aid over the next five years through its Community at Large program, Bertschi said. He credited the company for shelling out $500,000 for a system that doesn’t improve productivity.

“I’m really glad that Champion took a leadership role. We had to prod and urge them of course, but they went ahead and did it,” he said.

The system uses a plasma-injector on each of the four stacks that contain steam from the plant’s cooking, cooling and drying processes, Burdzy said. The system breaks up odour molecules and incinerates them. It has been operating since Friday June 4, he said.

Deputy mayor Paul Krauskopf said the system is already making a difference.

“We haven’t had any smells in the past two weeks,” he said.

On hand to help flip the switch at the official ceremony was Matthew Haun, a Grade 4 student from Morinville’s Notre Dame school. This school year Haun’s class wrote stories called Penny and the Pet Food Factory, patterned after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The class visited the Champion plant in March and Haun asked the managers why the plant smells so bad.

“It was probably three-quarters of the worst thing I’ve ever smelled,” he said in an interview, though he couldn’t recall any specific thing that smelled worse. At any rate, he’s happy the company has made changes.

“I won’t have to wake up and smell that odour,” he said.

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