BURLEY, ID (KMVT) The Simplot potato processing plant in Heyburn went out of business six years ago. Then the City of Burley inherited the nearby industrial wastewater treatment plant. In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to issue a new permit that reduced the amount of industrial waste that the plant handled.

Burley City Administrator Mark Mitton says, "We told EPA that if they issued that permit, we couldn't meet it. We had to have time to upgrade it, and they didn't care, they issued the permit anyway. And then we had to fight over the violation."

The City of Burley ended up having to pay a $5,000 fine because the treatment plant exceeded the amount it was allowed to discharge between July 2009 and January 2010. Now, they're moving ahead.

Mitton says, "We built a pipeline between this plant and our municipal plant to share the loading of the plant, and we've got an upgrade planned for this plant that will go to bid later this fall."

Mitton says the City of Burley had to tie the industrial plant to their city wastewater treatment plant. That meant installing a pipeline between the two and balancing the flows between them. He says now the city is hoping to improve the plant even more by December 2012 at the latest.