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After Sriracha's months-long battle with the City of Irwindale over its spicy odors, the City Council dropped their "public nuisance" label against the beloved hot-sauce maker on Wednesday night.
City officials also voted to dismiss the lawsuit they filed in October against Huy Fong Foods, the red sauce maker, according to the L.A. Times.
This decision comes on the heels of City Manager John Davidson, Mayor Mark Breceda and Councilman Julian Miranda visiting the 600,000-square-foot plant on Tuesday. Owner David Tran had been urging the city officials to tour his Sriracha factory, but had no luck until this week. He said Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Business and Economic Development representatives played a pivotal role in getting the officials to tour the space, reported Pasadena Star News.
After the tour, they all had a closed-door meeting with Tran about possible solutions, but they didn't divulge those details.
“This is what we needed to do a long time ago,” said Bob Machuca, of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. He added that it showed California is "open for business."
Other states, including Texas, had been trying to court Tran into moving his factory over to their parts.
Tran said his team installed a stronger air filtration system in their factory, and he even tested it with pepper spray. However, if it doesn't meet up to standards when they start processing their chiles during the harvest season in August, he wrote in a letter to the council that he would make the "necessary changes in order to better the system right away."
Just last month, the City Council had declared that the Sriracha operations were a "public nuisance" after a few residents complained that they were suffering from burning eyes, headaches, heartburn, inflamed asthma and nosebleeds.
