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People in the tiny town of Priam in Kandiyohi County have banded together to take on the town's only business. The Minnesota Valley Alfalfa Producers co-op turns hay from 380 area farmers into food pellets for livestock. The plant shrouds homes across the street in a thick, stale cloud of alfalfa dust, and residents have complained for years. The co-op has been a tough case for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, but now the plant may be on the verge of cleaning up its act.

	MPCA filters across Highway 23 turn on once every third day to measure particle matter in the air. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

The nine families in Priam are hoping for a white Christmas. Actually they'd be overjoyed with any Christmas that's not speckled green, the color of dust that settles on the snow and coats the icicles here in winter.

"When it gets wet it's just sticky, " says Garrett Slagter, 78.

Slagter and his wife, Jeanette, live just across Highway 23 from the plant in this little town south of Willmar. Winter or summer it can be like living in a green snowglobe.

"When we would be out there mowing grass, it was just like a dust storm," Garrett Slagter said. "All that dust that had accumulated, when you would go over it with a lawn mower, it was a total mess."

"You know you're breathing in dust," added Jeanette Slagter. "It's hay that's been bailed for a while, so it isn't fresh. It has a musty smell."

	Garrett and Jeanette Slagter and two of their grown sons are some of the few dozen residents of Priam (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

There has been an alfalfa plant in Priam for about 30 years. But angry complaints from across the street began when Minnesota Valley Alfalfa Producers, or MnVAP, took over and expanded the plant five years ago.

Residents sent photos and videos to state officials and took to the phones. One year ago the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency set up four metal air filters like a row of R2D2s in the Slagter's yard. Every third day they're clicking and whirring away, measuring particulate matter in the air.

Over the year the filters recorded 26 violations, sometimes two, three or four times the allowable level. Through much of this time the plant was adding new filters and ductwork that apparently made no difference.

This summer the plant manager solidified his reputation as a bad neighbor when he tailgated a pollution control official into Willmar and was charged with reckless driving.

One MPCA official calls the Priam situation a "highest priority" item on which the MPCA commissioner is briefed almost daily. Last month the MPCA took a severe step and told the plant to shut down. The plant continued loading and moving alfalfa. It took a restraining order from Kandiyohi District Court a week later to finally stop the dust.

	Resident Todd Swartz listens to presentations at a meeting about the plan to reform the plant. The meeting took place in nearby Raymond, the closest town with a community center. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

While the air cleared MPCA and MnVAP somehow reached an agreement that mandates major technical improvements to the plant over the next six months. Last week a Kandiyohi County judge ordered a public meeting to explain the plan.

MnVAP lawyer Jon Miesen faced the assembled town of Priam and did his best to explain that the co-op was on-board.

"There have been problems in the past, we realize that. The company is taking significant action to reduce the level of emissions. It made improvements last summer. It just completed improvements to its shredder. It added a bag-house, at an out-of-pocket cost of $100,000," said Miesen, who adds that the co-op has already spent about $350,000.

"(The plant) is continuing to monitor, it's continuing to make housekeeping improvements, " Miesen said. "It's going to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for improvements to the facility, the only purpose of which is to reduce dust emissions to improve the quality of life in your community."

Residents like Kim Swartz made it clear they would still keep the pressure on.

"I can tell by your faces, you're irritated." - Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar.

"I'm the one that has a 12-year-old daughter who is very sick by this," said Kim Swartz. "She has allergies and she's been very, very sick. She can't go outside and breathe, so can't go outside and play."

Residents asked MPCA manager Ann Foss why it had taken so long to shut the plant down. Foss said the shutdown was a rare measure that was not taken lightly.

"This is the only one that I personally know of that we've actually shut down. It has to be an extreme case when we do. Remember that we had to go to a judge to shut him down. A judge has to weigh a lot of factors. You can't just walk in there and say, 'There's dust in people's yards.' That wouldn't be enough."

Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said air quality problems this serious might be unusual for a feed plant, but legislators know air quality problems are not new to rural areas.

	Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said an amendment had actually been drafted in the legislature at one time to close down the MnVAP plant. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

"This kind of issue is not foreign to this part of the state," he said. "We've been through it with ValAdCo and the whole raising of pigs. . It's just the way it is in an agricultural area. And we're going to continue to see those tensions in agriculture in the state of Minnesota."

Johnson said at one point an amendment was drafted in the legislature to close down the MnVAP plant, but it was never introduced.

At the meeting Priam residents asked for some additional measures not in the plan. They want air monitors that run at all times and the capacity to shut the plant down at a moment's notice, even in the middle of the night.

But resident Curt Slagter, the son of the elder Slagters above, says at least they're talking again, and things are looking up.

	The four MPCA monitors directly across the street from the plant. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

"I would just like to say from what I've seen so far, I'm encouraged," said Slagter. "It's going in the right direction, finally. I hope next spring I don't have to scoop or rake a half-inch of hay-dust off my lawn . . . When the plant got shut down I went outside and washed my house windows and I've had clean windows for a month."

MnVAP officials say they want to get back to business. The manager said after the meeting the co-op is already spending more and more time in the red. The $500,000 in upgrades will be made, but at, quote, "significant hardship" to the company.

They have no choice in the matter, of course, if they want to stay in business. That "if" may be growing larger by the day.