Tomatoes: Fullerton Sees Red : Sanitation: The massive Beatrice Hunt-Wesson plant has been flushing tomato waste into sewers for decades. But explosive growth has taxed sewage treatment centers, and the city is now saying ‘no more.’

There’s a food fight stewing.

For more than half a century, the massive Beatrice Hunt-Wesson cannery in Fullerton quietly has been peeling and washing tomatoes, cooking them to a pulp and then turning them into ketchup, paste and sauce.

Whatever was left over was flushed into local sewers.

And during those years, the Orange County Sanitation District quietly has been accepting the tomato waste, treating it along with the rest of the county’s sewage and then discharging it out to sea.

Until now.

The sanitation district has had enough of Hunt-Wesson’s red-stained tomato remains. Faced with explosive urban growth that has severely taxed the sewage treatment system and caused concern about environmental damage, the district this year turned to its biggest single waste producer--Hunt-Wesson--and ordered it to cut back dramatically on the tomato scraps.

But officials at the cannery, one of the largest in the nation, are taking the sanitation district to court to challenge that order.

The cannery is unfairly being held accountable for the fact that growth in the surrounding North County area has overloaded the sewer, according to Hunt-Wesson.

Plant officials have argued, moreover, that if the district forces the issue, the cannery could be forced to build its own treatment plant in order to comply.

That would cost $7 million, plant officials estimate and could necessitate either a sharp cutback in production or, more ominously, a corporate decision to move the cannery altogether.

“Our position is we’re in the tomato processing business, not the sanitation business,” said Frank J. Quevedo, spokesman for Beatrice Hunt-Wesson Inc.

But the sanitation district, under pressure from state and federal agencies, says that unless the tomato waste is curtailed, underwater plant and animal life ultimately could suffer. And the sheer volume of it is clogging the sewage treatment system, sanitation officials said.

In a typical season, Hunt-Wesson officials say, the cannery processes a staggering 296,000 tons of tomatoes. Those are transformed into Hunt’s ketchup, Hunt’s tomato paste and Hunt’s tomato sauce, as well as an average of 2.3 million pounds of tomato waste.

When it is in full operation, sanitation district officials say, the cannery accounts for as much waste discharge in a single day as all the residences and businesses in the cities of Anaheim and Fullerton combined--an area with about 350,000 people.

The sanitation district’s leverage against the cannery is an annual waste discharge permit that comes up for renewal in January.

The order to cut waste discharges went out not only to Hunt-Wesson, but also to other major industries including two other North County food processing plants, said Thomas L. Woodruff, general counsel and spokesman for the sanitation district. There was some grumbling, but all of the other industries complied with the cutbacks, Woodruff said.

At first the Hunt-Wesson plant complied as well, halving its daily output from as much as 50,000 pounds of tomato waste to just above 25,000 by instituting some tidier housekeeping measures.

But the plant balked when the sanitation district in February ordered it to either curtail the discharges by another 15% immediately and a total of 62% over a five-year period--or face loss of its discharge permit. The district ultimately wants the cannery to discharge no more than 10,000 pounds of waste a day.

Company officials responded to the order by filing a lawsuit. The disagreement moves into Orange County Superior Court on Nov. 15 for the first of what could be many hearings.

“Making us do what they’re trying to make us do is not going to solve their problems. They have to increase capacity,” Quevedo said of the sanitation district.

Hunt-Wesson employs a total of about 3,500 workers in Fullerton, making it one of Orange County’s largest employers. The cannery itself employs about 1,200 workers, of which 700 to 900 work there on a seasonal basis, Quevedo said.

Between November and May, the cannery that takes up much of a city block sits idle, just another building in an industrial complex along West Valencia Drive in Fullerton.

But come late May or early June, the Hunt-Wesson cannery springs to life. Trucks haul produce, mostly from the fields of Southern California’s Imperial Valley, and seasonal workers flock back to the plant to process the tomatoes.

In the company’s lawsuit, Hunt-Wesson attorney Joel S. Moskowitz says that Hunt-Wesson’s volume of tomatoes has remained essentially unchanged since 1970. The area around the plant has grown dramatically during this time, however. In fact, that growth is prompting the sanitation district to look for additional capacity for its two sewage treatment plants in Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach, Moskowitz said in the lawsuit.

The litigation in this case could take years to resolve, Woodruff said, because Hunt-Wesson shows no inclination of backing down. Quevedo said, however, the company wants this dispute resolved as quickly as possible.