Dolores board orders Mountain Sun to pay bill

Dolores board orders Mountain Sun to pay bill

Mar. 29, 2001

By Janelle Holden
Journal Staff Writer

Despite a dispute over the billing, the Dolores Town Board on Monday ordered Dolores juice company Mountain Sun to pay a bill for its discharge permit by Friday.

The board also began a 30-day review of the town’s rate structure for dumping organic waste into the wastewater-treatment plant.

"I think we need to do this (review). Maybe the (prices) are low, maybe they’re high," said board member Val Truelson.

"We are all for a fair and reasonable charge," said Mountain Sun plant manager Bob Curry, who asked for a 40-day extension to pay the bill.

The special board meeting was called on Monday to address a $5,262 outstanding balance on an $18,500 permit fee the board set in October.

But employees of Mountain Sun Organic and Natural Juices accused the town board of never passing a rate structure for their current permit, and of giving the company two different versions of minutes from the Oct. 24 meeting, when the rates were allegedly passed.

Mike Noel, Mountain Sun vice president of operations, said he and several representatives from the company were at the Oct. 24 meeting and do not remember a motion being passed to implement a rate structure.

"All of a sudden the bill hit and we had no input at all in the billing structure. We just received the bill," said Noel.

Mayor James Moore explained that the company was mistakenly given a "draft" and the second version was correct.

The company says it received the bill for September through December in January, but Dolores town clerk Ronda Lancaster said she mailed a monthly bill in December and another in January.

At the October meeting, the board said, it set a rate of 50 cents per pound of biochemical oxygen demand contained in the organic waste permitted to Mountain Sun.

The board charges Mountain Sun for the entire 525 BODs permitted, regardless of how much organic material the company discharges.

Lancaster explained that because of a 10-day lag between testing for BODs and receiving the results, the town must assume the company is using its entire permitted amount. Assuming otherwise, she said, would hurt other businesses in Dolores that wish to dump organic waste since the town has limited space before it goes out of compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Dolores resident Marianne Mate asked the board, "What’s another couple of weeks?"

"I think that you don’t want to come across as somebody who’s chasing a business out of town," she said.

Before the Monday board meeting, Mountain Sun sent a letter to all of the board of trustees refuting some of the board members’ previous accusations at public board meetings that the company did not pay its sales tax.

Moore dismissed this as a "misunderstanding between the Mountain Sun bookkeeper" and the "town clerk" because they didn’t have the proper name of the company.