Champion Petfoods of Morinville could face fines of $250 per day now that a deal to manage the plant's odour has fallen apart.
The town and Champion failed to meet a May 1 deadline to finalize a compliance agreement to manage offensive smells coming from the company's pet food plant. Morinville's chief administrative officer Debbie Oyarzun informed town council of the news Tuesday.
Council had asked administration last Feb. 14 to sign a compliance agreement with Champion that would commit the company to a timeline for its smell-control efforts. So long as it stuck to that timeline, the town would hold off on further fines.
The town had held off on fines since then while the deal was under negotiation, Oyarzun said, but now that the deal is off, the fines are back on.
"While administration will remain entirely open to ongoing discussions with Champion, the planning and development department indicated that they can no longer recommend ongoing forbearance from enforcement," she said.
The deal foundered on a few key clauses, said Champion CEO Frank Burdzy, the details of which he was not able to discuss. Despite that, he said the company still had a good working relationship with the town and would continue to work with it on the smell issue.
Mayor Lloyd Bertschi said he was very disappointed that the deal fell through.
"We've been talking about this since last summer," he said, and the company said last September that it was interested in a deal.
"We provided it to them in January, and unfortunately, four months later, we couldn't come to a deal. It's really unfortunate."
Fines?
Exactly what fines might be involved is an open question. The town is still researching possible penalties should the town get complaints about the plant, said planning and development director Greg Hofmann.
He suggested that the community standards, land use and business license bylaws could apply in this case.
The fact that Champion is a major employer in the town would not factor into the town's actions, he added.
The community standards bylaw allows the town to impose a $200 fine on anyone who produces offensive odours on their property. The fine rises to $600 on third and subsequent offences. Anyone who violates the business license bylaw can be fined $200 on the first offence and $500 on the second, plus an additional $250 per day for continuing offences.
It's less clear how the land use bylaw would apply in this case, but it allows for $200 to $400 fines. The town could also theoretically revoke Champion's business license or development permit, which would effectively stop the plant's operations.
It would be up to town administration, not council, to decide how to enforce these bylaws as they relate to Champion, Bertschi said.
"This is an administrative process," he said.
What's next
Burdzy stuck by his promise to have his company's new smell-control measures in place by mid-June. The new water-cyclone smell-scrubbers and 40-metre steam stack were on order, he said, and would be available for public viewing at an open house soon after their installation.
When questioned on the credibility of that promise, given that the company had already missed several deadlines on the gear's installation, Burdzy replied that his company had a plan and was implementing it.
"We've got commitments to get equipment installed in June, and we continue to hold our contractors accountable to that," he said.
It would be up to bylaw officers to issue any tickets to Champion if its odour problem returns, Oyarzun said.
How often that would happen is unknown. The town's first quarter report, also released at the Tuesday meeting, suggested that the town's bylaw officers issued just eight tickets for the 370 complaints they investigated from January 1 to March 31.
Those officers would work with Morinville RCMP this year to ensure they had the right balance between education and enforcement, Oyarzun said.
