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Watertown slaughterhouse in jeopardy after Car-Freshner Corp. raises stink

Robert S. Donovan
/
Flickr

Developers hoping to build a slaughterhouse in Watertown will have to go back to the drawing board. This comes after the Car Freshner Corporation has objected to the developer's plans. 

The dispute comes down to the smell.  Car-Freshner, the corporation that makes the iconic little tree air fresheners, operates out of the same industrial park where developers were planning to build a $20 million slaughterhouse. In a meeting in Watertown Tuesday, an official with Car-Freshner threatened to move their plant and its more than 300 employees out of the city if the slaughterhouse was approved.

Daniel Samann, of Car-Freshner, claimed smells from the processing plant would interfere with the sophisticated fragrance testing in their state-of-the-art- labs. In other words the company wants their little trees to keep smelling like royal pine, rainforest mist, and vanillaroma.

The New York meat company and developer Mike Lundy said they would research whether an air filtration system could prevent bad smells from wafting over to its neighbors.

In a statement Thursday, the Jefferson County Economic Development Agency said Car-Freshner is one of its most important economic assets and must be protected

The agency  says  it still supports the slaughterhouse and will help find a better place for it in Jefferson County.