Valley Queen Updates Community on Odor Issue

Valley Queen issued this statement to update the community:

Controlling the odor from our wastewater treatment plant has challenged Valley Queen Cheese Factory officials and our environmental engineering consultant, The Probst Group. Our employees, along with our engineering firm’s crew, have feverishly worked to identify and address the source of the odor and to properly balance the chemistry, biology and engineering within the treatment plant.

To control the odor, Valley Queen and Probst are nearing completion on the engineering and design of covers for the plant’s two new equalization tanks that will include air scrubber technology. Processing aids and process modifications will remain in place until the covers are installed later this spring.

Henry Probst, president of The Probst Group, says, “The Probst Group sincerely regrets the current odor concerns regarding the wastewater treatment expansion at the Valley Queen Cheese Facility in Milbank, SD. The expansion project was a complex retrofit of the existing treatment system designed to maintain utility of existing assets as part of the upgraded process. This type of retrofit requires a rebalancing of the processes and can present operators significant challenges as the new process is tuned to the new configuration. The Valley Queen expansion has led to more odor than anticipated and our team has been working with the Valley Queen staff, in a systematic manner, to identify the potential odor sources as well as means to mitigate.

“The Probst Group remains committed to the final success of the expansion project, Valley Queen Cheese Factory and the community of Milbank. My team and I will work diligently until the odor issues have been eliminated,” said Probst.

Valley Queen is known throughout the dairy industry as a processor of quality natural cheeses. We will continue our full court press to solve this odor issue so it doesn’t detract from the goodness of our products or our responsibility to the citizens of Milbank.

Please direct all questions and concerns to Lance Johnson, Valley Queen’s Vice President-Engineering and Process Technology, (605) 432-4563.