The company was fined by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for violating sulfur dioxide emission limits in 1999.

To settle the matter, Western Sugar will pay $5,600 of the $22,4000 penalty and pave the ramp from its beet-washing building to State Avenue to reduce the dust kicked up by beet trucks.

Larry Alheim, of DEQs enforcement division, said the state has received some complaints about dust coming from the plant, which is near homes on the citys South Side. We thought that would provide the most benefit to the community," he said, of the settlement.

Patricia Fuller-Pratt, Western Sugars environmental affairs manager in Denver, said the company is aware that dust is an issue in the neighborhood. I think they (residents) will be pleased with this."

She said it would be cheaper for the company to pay the penalty. But, while Western Sugar has complied with dust regulations, the project will further reduce dust, Fuller-Pratt said. Paving will occur sometime this summer.

With the sugar industry in an economic downturn from over-supply and low prices, Western Sugar probably wouldnt have considered doing a paving project because it hasnt had the money, Fuller-Pratt said. But because of the enforcement action, the company didnt have much choice.

Although the dust issue is not directly related to the sulfur dioxide violations, the paving plan can be used to help settle the violations because both are related to air quality, Alheim said.

The DEQ said Western Sugar violated its three-hour emission limit for sulfur dioxide on Oct. 11 and 12, 1999 during the testing of a meter that measures the flow of fuel oil. The emission limit applies to the pulp dryer stack. Alheim said there were a total of eight violations, four on Oct. 11 and four on Oct. 12.

Fuller-Pratt said after sugar is removed from the beets, whats left are pieces of pulp that look like french fries. The company can either press out the moisture and sell the pulp as cattle feed or it can use the dryers to remove the moisture and turn the pulp into pellets for animal feed.

For the past six or seven years, the company has used natural gas to fire the pulp dryers. Because natural gas is a clean-burning fuel, sulfur dioxide pollution is minimal.

The plant, however, can burn fuel oil as an alternative fuel if its supply of natural gas is interrupted.

As part of the Yellowstone Valleys State Implementation Plan to control sulfur dioxide pollution, Western Sugar signed an agreement with the state in the mid-1990s that called for conducting annual tests on its fuel-oil metering equipment and stack.

The tests enable the company to calculate sulfur dioxide emissions based on the amount of oil burned. Fuller-Pratt said the company has to test only if it intends to use fuel oil. Because the plants supply of natural gas could be interrupted, the company wanted to have fuel oil as an alternative, she said.

Every year since the pollution control plan was adopted, the only time the plant has burned fuel oil has been for the test, Fuller-Pratt said. In previous years, there hasnt been a problem because the test lasted only three to five hours.

During the 1999-2000 campaign, Western Sugar decided to set up for the test a day in advance to make sure everything was working smoothly and continued burning fuel oil in one of the dryers until the test was completed, she said. The violations occurred during the 30 hours that oil was fired but stopped as soon as the test was finished.

Fuller-Pratt said the fuel oil had been purchased several years before the pollution control plan was developed and contained more sulfur than what is now allowed. Obviously that fuel oil had too high a sulfur content to use on a regular basis," she said. The solution was to stop using the fuel oil.

Getting rid of the fuel oil proved a little more difficult. Fuller-Pratt said none of the three local refineries would take the oil and neither would the refinery in Great Falls. Western Sugar finally sold the fuel oil to a refinery in California, she said.

Since then, Western Sugar has told the state that it will not burn fuel oil. At present, the plant has a non-interruptible supply of natural gas, Fuller-Pratt said. If the plant decides in the future to again burn fuel oil, it would buy lower-sulfur oil and operate in compliance with air quality regulations, she said.