The feud between Sriracha Hot Sauce creator David Tran and the city of Irwindale came to a halt on Wednesday when the Irwindale City Council unanimously jettisoned a lawsuit and public nuisance declaration against Tran’s company Huy Fong Foods.
Last October, the battle was joined when the city filed suit against Huy Fong Foods, alleging that the fumes from the factory were causing local residents to become ill. Last month, the Council unanimously approved the public nuisance order.
But on Wednesday, the city met with Tran, according to the Pasadena Star-News, who bought a letter stating he has already started to address the problem and assured he would continue to do so, and that enabled the City Council to drop its actions against him. Tran wrote in the letter, “At the commencement of this year’s chile harvest season, if the air filtration system does not perform well, then Huy Fong Foods will make the necessary changes in order to better the system right away.”
City Councilman Julian Miranda said, “We forged a relationship. Let’s keep that going.” Bob Machuca, of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said that the decision buy the Council to eschew action against Tran showed California is “open for business. This is what we needed to do a long time ago.”
Tran had been courted by other areas to leave Los Angeles and relocate, including Texas, whose delegates visited the factory.
Tran recently started dealing with the issue by putting stronger filters on the factory’s rooftop air filtration system so that the fumes’ effect on residents would be mitigated. He tested the new filters by using pepper spray. The fumes were caused by the grinding of chiles, which typically starts in August.
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