Grand Cities residents, if you noticed that smell from the sugar factory was back recently, you're right.
Workers at American Crystal Sugar Co.'s East Grand Forks plant noticed strong odors on Thursday and on April 24, exactly a week before that, according to plant manager Lloyd Kennedy.
He said the odors were gone within hours from the plant's vicinity. The April 24 odor disappeared within two hours, he said.
The odor Thursday occurred about 11 a.m. at the condenser ponds, where condensation from the sugar-making process drains. Workers adjusted the chemical treatment and it was gone shortly after, according to Kennedy.
For some reason, though, the odor seemed to linger elsewhere long into the afternoon. Noses in downtown Grand Forks were still wrinkled as of 4 p.m.
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Kennedy and other American Crystal executives recently briefed the East Grand Forks City Council on their odor-fighting efforts. They said then that there was a reasonable chance they'd be able to curb the smell.
The odor is an especially tough problem for American Crystal because there's many, many potential sources of it, Kennedy said Thursday. There's just no absolute guarantee that there would be no odor in the ag processing industry, he said.
Reach Tran at (701) 780-1248; (800) 477-6572, ext. 248; or send e-mail to ttran@gfherald.com .
