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No. 7 December 1996 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
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MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 7 - December 1996
$88 Million for Canadian Closed Loop
Enzymes From Israel
Clean-up Plan Closes Mills
PM10 Smog Blights Babies in the Womb
Greenpeace and Fletcher Challenge NZ
Port Angeles Mill to Close
Another Chlorine Dioxide Spill in Powell River
Tissue Issue
Ketchikan Pulp To Close
JUMP Workforce Training
US National Sludge Alliance
BC Workshops Complete
Thanks this issue to Laurie Valeriano of Washington Toxics Coalition, Miranda Holmes of Georgia Strait Alliance, Catherine Delahunty of Greenpeace New Zealand, and Eric Hummel of the Right-To-Know Project in Ketchikan Alaska.
Canada's pulp and paper industry has unveiled a five year, $88 million research program to develop next generation pulp and paper mill technologies that "shift the environmental focus from pollution treatment to prevention." The research aims to develop closed cycle technologies which can be commercialized at mills across Canada and later exported, creating significant economic spinoffs.
The future installation of system closure technologies, ("They are many and varied and could be phased in over many years") will reduce water, energy and chemical usage and further reduce effluent and emission volumes, eventually leading to the effluent-free mill. Fibre usage will improve in two ways: by achieving greater yield from both virgin wood fibre and recycled fibre, and by recovering residual fibre from process waste water.
The five year research program will develop technologies which can be retrofitted to any type of mill: pulp, integrated paper or board mills and other non-integrated paper mills.
Canadian pulp and paper producers have committed $12 million annually, including contributions-in-kind, and the federal government will contribute a further $3 million annually in the form of repayable grants. Paprican's pilot research plant in Montreal will be expanded at a cost of $13 million.
Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, October 1996
A method to whiten wood pulp with enzymes and a small amount of chlorine has been developed by researchers of Haifa Technion University, in north Israel. The method is no more expensive than the current bleaching technology and has been successfully tested in a large scale paper mill trial. The technique is now being commercialized. The researchers believe the world's paper industry will soon use the enzymes to minimize, and eventually eliminate, the use of chlorine for paper bleaching, thus contributing to a better environment.
Xinhua News, November 1996
In October the Xinhua news agency reported that China plans to close all paper mills on the upper Yangtze River as part of a clean up effort. The closures would aim to minimize the ecological effects of the Three Gorges hydro-electric dam, the world's largest hydro-electric power plant, due to be completed in 2009. The US Export-Import Bank refused to help fund the £20 billion project, citing environmental concerns.
The Guardian, October 1996
Air pollution can stunt the growth of babies in the womb, according to American, Polish, and Czech scientists who reached the conclusion after carrying out studies in heavily polluted regions of Eastern Europe. Children born in urban areas in the West may also be affected. ``It is a cause for concern which we are planning to investigate,'' said Frederica Perera of Columbia University in New York.
Perera said that Polish babies whose mothers were exposed while pregnant to high levels of pollutant particles of less than 10 micrometres in diameter (PM10), were born with small heads and bodies. A study carried out by the US Environmental Protection Agency found similar results in research in Northern Bohemia in the Czech republic.
Perera's study analysed blood samples from the umbilical cords of 163 babies from Krakow and Limanowe in Poland. She measured how the DNA of each child had been damaged by compounds called polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are produced when fuel burns and coats the tiny pollutant particles present in smog.
These particles can cause mutations in human DNA and increase the probability of cancer. While levels of toxins are generally lower in the West than in the most polluted areas of Eastern Europe, Perera cautions that "PAHs are pervasive. You find them in the air in urban industrialized areas around the world ."
New Scientist, October 1996
Greenpeace New Zealand recently filed an appeal in the Environment Court on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's "Regional Plan for the Tarawera River Catchment."
Fletcher Challenge's Tasman Pulp and Paper Company discharges 150 million litres of organochlorine-contaminated effluent from its Kawerau mill into the Tarawera River every day, making it one of the most polluted rivers in New Zealand. The ten year Plan sets out policies, objectives and rules for toxicity, discolouration and oxygen levels for the River. However, Greenpeace claims that the Plan does not include any guidelines requiring the phase-out of toxic discharges into the River, nor provide a timetable for reductions in effluent toxicity.
Greenpeace also released a new report, Pulp Fiction, detailing the environmental impact of the Tasman Pulp and Paper mill's toxic pollution of the Tarawera River over the past 42 years.
* Catherine Delahunty ph: 011-64-9-630-6317
The Rayonier dissolving sulphite pulp mill in Port Angeles Washington, across the Jaun de Fuca Strait from Victoria BC, has announced that it will close in 1997 due to rising prices of wood chips.
Zero Toxics Alliance
MacMillan Bloedel's Powell River paper mill was closed for two hours in September after a small quantity of dilute chlorine dioxide solution leaked into a sealed sewer and to the effluent treatment system. Two employees suffered minor injuries as a result of breathing the fumes. Boaters in the area were detoured away from the mill. Some townsite residents reported upper respiratory difficulties; sore throats, running noses, not to mention stress and fear.
Two years ago, the mill was the site of the largest chlorine spill in the history of the province.
*Solution To Our Pollution (STOP). For further information contact Paddy Goggins 483-3126 or Delores Holland 485-4201
Tissue Issue
Reach for Unbleached! says "Let Tissues Be Your Issue!"
Thanks to a generous grant from the Bullitt Foundation of Seattle, Reach for Unbleached! is preparing for the January launch of our Tissue Issue Campaign, designed to prove and improve the market for unbleached household paper products.
Proving this market, (products for which currently come mostly from the US and Scandinavia, since Scott Paper ceased production of unbleached tissues here in BC) will help to convince BC manufacturers to stop using chlorine and chlorine compounds and convert to more environmentally-friendly bleaching processes like ozone or hydrogen peroxide.
Reach for Unbleached! plans to link environmentally conscientious consumers with manufacturers, distributors and local retailers of unbleached toilet papers, paper towels, table napkins, nose tissues, coffee filters, tampons, pads...
Reach for Unbleached! will be developing volunteer kits that will include lists of alternatives and suppliers, bumperstickers and cards, and actions for individuals. Already available are copies of Making Paper as if the Earth Matters, The Paper List and The Wise Use of Paper. Reach for Unbleached! will provide volunteers with product names and distributors, to make orders easy for large and small retailers.
We're now recruiting volunteers to help get the word out to friends, families, employers, schools, community clubs, professional associations, and local retailers. Call, write or email for more information.
The Ketchikan Pulp Company has announced the closure of its Ketchikan Alaska sulphite pulp mill by Mar. 24th, 1997.
The move was partly a result of political pressure to preserve the remaining old growth in the Tongass National Forest, where the mill got its fibre supply. The mill was also plagued by pollution problems, from toxic effluent to gassings of workers and neighbourhoods with sulphur dioxide, chlorine, and hydrogen sulphide.
Local environmentalists from the Ketchikan Community Health Information Project forced regulatory agencies to begin to enforce permits and standards at the mill. Eric Hummel says, "We started as a handful of local people following EPA and ADEC permitting processes and indulging in the futile exercise of requesting that permits be protective of human and environmental health.Our initial aim was just to find out what the level of risk from the mill was. When we asked questions, the answers were so evasive as to be alarming. Gradually, we got sucked into the process of going through the documentation for all permits with a fine tooth comb, requesting more information where the data did not make sense, or (more often) did not substantiate the conclusions. For over two years we sifted through mountains of data, digested it and talked it over."
"We got educated about effluent and emissions and learned about risk assessments. We got help from the Alaska Clean Water Alliance who joined Tongass Conservation Society, SCLDF and WELC in a citizens suit for Clean Water Act violations." Now, says Hummel, the challenge is to help the mill's neighbours and suppporters learn how to deal with the toxic left-overs from the mill's closure.
Right-To-Know Project, Ketchikan, Alaska
Forest Renewal BC, the mega-fund created from stumpage money on publicly-owned forest, will invest $36.8 million over the next three years to provide basic education, job skills training and upgrading for BC's pulp and paper industry workforce. The scheme is the result of a joint effort by the two pulp and paper unions and some 14 pulp and paper companies.
The Joint Union Management Program for Employee Skills Development (JUMP) is a long-term training strategy. It addresses the need to provide basic educational upgrading as well as job skills training for an estimated 16,000 pulp and paper workers.
* FRBC Press Release, October 1996
US citizens' organizations have banded together in the National Sludge Alliance to stop the spreading of sewage sludge on farmland. The new alliance has several immediate goals:
collect and disseminate information relating to disposal of sewage sludge, focusing especially on land application and its problems
organize for the labelling of all foods and animal products grown on sewage sludge
develop a plain English guide to the terms and definitions used by government regulators and the waste disposal industry.
* For more information please contact the National Sludge Alliance at PO Box 130, Copake, NY 12516; ph: (518)329-2120
The MillWatch program of the Reach for Unbleached! Foundation has just completed a series of 10 workshops to promote public education at the local level on pulp mill monitoring in British Columbia.
In each town, Reach for Unbleached! worked with local organizations as co-hosts. Two workshops were co-hosted by environmental groups (Georgia Strait Alliance and East Kootenay Environmental Society), two by First Nations (Halalt and Sliammon), one by a workers' union (Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada) and the 5 others by multistakeholder groups such as the Campbell River Environmental Council, the Howe Sound Round Table on the Environment and Economy, and Prince George and Quesnel City Council Environment Advisory Committees. All mills except Harmac in Nanaimo and Crestbrook in Skookumchuck were also co-hosts to the workshops.
Stefan Ochman, project manager of Reach!'s MillWatch Program, notes that lack of trust was expressed at all workshops. "In all communities, citizens questioned mill monitoring results. This was termed as the Fox taking care of the chicken house". This lack of trust wasn't only in one direction. In some mill towns, (most noticeably in Powell River and Kamloops) mill personnel did not trust environmental group members. Furthermore, in Crofton, Skookumchuck and Kamloops, citizens did not trust the work done by government staff.
In all cases, due to the fact that all players were in the same room, communication was strengthened between the community, the mill and government. Most importantly, citizens were concerned and interested enough to propose a series of monitoring actions. What will happen with these proposed actions will all depend on the commitment of citizens, and on the willingness of mill and government staff to cooperate.