Grand Forks City Council Asked to Allow Use of Nearby Land for Beet Pulp, Tailings

By Tu-Uyen Tran, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Aug. 14–Some Grand Forks City Council members made a stink Monday over a new kind of sugar beet stink that might be coming to the area.

The source of the odor would be discarded beet pulp and tailings — the tail at the bottom of the beet root — from American Crystal Sugar Co.’s East Grand Forks plant. The Moorhead-based sugar cooperative wants to use some land west of Grand Forks for a dumpsite and is asking the council to make this legal.

In the past, the co-op only had dumpsites on the Minnesota side of the Red River, making money for landowners who agree to take in the pulp and tails.

In at least one year, though, the smell of decay was bad enough to prompt some residents to complain to the council.

Council President Hal Gershman wanted to know why Grand Forks would make a law that would force area residents to want to face the same odor.

Council members Doug Christensen and Curt Kreun tried to reassure him that newer disposal methods would result in fewer odors. If the smell did get to be too much, they said, the council would be giving American Crystal the go ahead for only one year as an experiment.

Gershman said the weather can make all the difference, and once the city sets precedent, it’s hard to go back.

At first, the discussion seemed to imply that, because one of the ways to reduce the odor is to spread pulp and tails over more land, there isn’t enough available land in rural East Grand Forks for the task. But it later turned out that was not the case.

Steve Clausen, American Crystal’s wastewater manager, said two co-op members and Grand Forks-area landowners, Beau Bateman and Art Greenberg, had wanted to make some money by taking the pulp and tails. They asked the co-op to approach the city, he said.

The dumpsite would be off of 32nd Avenue South, one of the city’s main corridors.

Christensen said the city is just giving this a try as a way to help a major area employer, which also happens to be interested in paying the city of Grand Forks to treat some of its sewage.

While the pulp and tailings have been a nuisance to only a small number of East Side residents, American Crystal’s inability to treat all of its sewage in a timely manner is the source of the famous stink that afflicts many East Side and Grand Forks residents alike.

Kreun said Grand Forks’ proposed law allowing pulp and tailings to be dumped is tougher than even that of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Even if there were a little smell, Council member Bob Brooks said, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “It’s an agriculture region we’re in,” he said. “We have fertilizer. We have potatoes. We have beets.”

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