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No. 9 April 1997 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
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MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 9 - April 1997
Americans Lobby for Totally Chlorine Free
Washington State Moves to Zero Discharge
Maine Zero Chlorine Bill
Gulf of Mexico Pipeline
Georgia Buys Green Paper
Regulatory Reinvention
Mill to Fund Fish Studies
Macblo's Ontario Expansion>
Greenpeace on Chlorine Dioxide
Arbokem's Fields of Reams
Kenaf Paper Plant in Texas
Citizens' Handbook
Celgar's Uncontrollable Urge to Dump Again
Thanks this issue to Laurie Valeriano of Washington Toxics Coalition, Miranda Holmes of Georgia Strait Alliance, Bruce Heibert of the Coalition for Responsible Investment, Darrell Geist of Montana Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers, Lisa Finaldi of Greenpeace International, Jay Ritchlin, Natural Resources Council of Maine.
For the last three months, communities across the United States have been rallying public support for the adoption of Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) bleaching in the pulp and paper industry. The lobby effort is impressive in its coherence, geographical distribution, and social solidarity. The plea for support is in response to new proposed rules by the EPA that will allow continued organochlorine pollution from pulp and paper mills.
Both options under review by EPA will allow chlorine-based chemicals, primarily chlorine dioxide, to be used in the bleaching process. The Clean Water Act mandates that the best technology available be adopted to achieve zero discharge of toxic pollutants. TCF is the only technology that allows pulp mills to totally "close the loop" on water discharges.
In their 1995 reassessment of these pollutants, EPA scientists warned that minute exposures to organochlorines like dioxins and furans, can lead to cancer, and severely harm the immune, developmental and reproductive systems of humans. Wildlife populations are also at risk. These potent chemicals persist in the environment, bioaccumulate through the food chain, and disrupt, mimic, and block hormone systems.
Citizens, pulp mill residents, tribal and civic leaders, responsible businesses, scientists and environmentalists are calling on President Clinton, EPA Administrator Carol Browner, and pulp and paper mills to adopt Totally Chlorine Free technology. If EPA does not choose a standard based on chlorine-free technologies, mills will be locked into an extremely toxic technology for another 20 years.
You can help by emailing:
Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers, Box 7941 Missoula Montana USA 59807; (406)728 0867 phone & fax; cmcr@ism.net
In Washington state, draft regulations from a review of water quality standards require zero discharges of "bioaccumulative chemicals of concern" (BCCs) by 2025, phaseouts of mixing zones for BCCs by 2015, and maintaining BCC baselines by 2005.
Carol Dansereau, J.D., Director, Industrial Toxics Project, Washington Toxics Coalition, 4516 University Way, NE, Seattle, WA 98105; ph: (206)632-1545; fax: (206)632-8661
A wide coalition of citizen groups and the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indian Nations are supporting a new Maine bill, An Act to Eliminate Paper Mill Dioxin and Restore Maine's Rivers.
The bill would prohibit the use of chlorine-based chemicals in the bleaching processes after the year 2002. After that date, processes that create and discharge dioxin will violate Maine's water quality permitting requirements. Predictably, Maine's mills are responding by claiming that conversion to chlorine dioxide with its "virtual elimination" of dioxin should be good enough.
In January the EPA set new dioxin wastewater permit limits for Lincoln Pulp & Paper Co. in Maine. The most stringent dioxin limits ever required by EPA, the "non detectable" dioxin limit is set at 10 parts per quadrillion at the bleach plant.
For more information, contact Jay Ritchlin, Natural Resources Council of Maine, 271 State Street, Augusta, Maine 04330; ph (207)622-3101 X 218; fax (207)622-4343. jritchlin@nrcm.org
HOPE in Taylor County, Florida and the Clean Water Network are fighting permits from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to allow Proctor & Gamble's Buckeye kraft pulp mill at Perry, Florida to build a 15-mile pipeline to carry effluent to the Gulf of Mexico.
Contact Joy Towles Cummings, hope@igc.apc.org; ph/fax (904)584-4544, PO Box 327, Salem, FL 32356
The Georgia State Senate is considering legislation to direct state agencies to purchase a wide variety of paper products with post-consumer recycled content, to print documents double-sided in order to save money by reducing paper consumption, and to promote education of state employees about the availability and benefits of purchasing chlorine free paper products.
Alicia Culver, Government Purchasing Project, PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; ph (202)387-8030; email: aculver@essential.org
In January, the US EPA signed a Pollution Prevention Planning agreement, Project XL Final Project Agreement (FPA), with Weyerhaeuser Flint River kraft pulp mill in Oglethorpe, Georgia.
Weyerhaeuser has agreed to implement a range of environmental protection measures including: the study of methods to reduce bleach plant flow by fifty percent, incorporation of ISO 14001 standards into the upgrade of the plant's environmental management system, energy conservation, reduction of solid waste, improved water quality discharged to the river, and decreased raw water demand.
Weyerhaeuser has requested that flexibility be granted in emission caps, and in meeting testing requirements. Enforcement mechanisms now available to the State and EPA will remain in place. Weyerhaeuser will be given the flexibility to demonstrate that the required reductions of hazardous air pollutants can be achieved through the use of innovative pollution prevention and engineering approaches instead of prescribed end-of-pipe controls.
For more information: Environmental Protection Agency, 3202 Mall, 401 M St SW, Mail Code 2129, Washington, DC 20460; www.epa.gov/ProjectXL or fax-on-demand menu at (202)260-8590; or contact Janet McElmurray, Weyerhaeuser Company, c/o Project XL, PO Box 238, Oglethorpe, GA 31068; (912)472-5230
The owners of Daishowa-Marubeni International and Weldwood of Canada have been ordered to spend $100,000 to research the effects of pulp mill pollution on fish in the Fraser River, as a consequence for a 1995 effluent spill at the Quesnel British Columbia mill which killed fish.
* Vancouver Sun, February 1997
MacMillan Bloedel is about to open Canada's biggest medium-density fibreboard plant, in Pembroke Ontario. The plant will ship 130 million square feet of "Northern Gold Ultra MDF," worth $75 million, annually, to the American market.
* Ottawa Citizen, January 1997
Towards Zero-Effluent Pulp and Paper Production: The Pivotal role of Totally Chlorine Free Bleaching, Paul Johnston et al, Greenpeace Research Laboratories, University of Exeter, UK, Technical Report 7/96, November 28 1996 ISBN: 90-73361-32-X. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam.
Scientists at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories in Exeter England have released the long-awaited new report on pulp and paper, Towards Zero-Effluent Pulp and Paper Production . As requested by grass roots groups, the report emphasizes a scientific discussion of the environmental and toxicological impact of chlorine dioxide bleaching.
The 33-page report outlines the history and types of pulp production processes and then moves into a detailed discussion of bleaching agents and processes, the formation of organochlorines by chlorine bleaching with a special emphasis on chlorine dioxide (ECF) bleaching, and pollution control measures from extended delignification to sludge disposal. An exquisitely-precise exploration of the effects of process modification on organochlorine production includes the polite suggestion that "industrial claims that ECF alone can fully address the problem of chlorinated dioxin production may be over optimistic."
The scientists go on to point out the linkage between chlorine dioxide and the production of chlorine, and to look at recent research on biological impacts of effluents including the issue of endocrine disruption. A short chapter on closing the bleach circuits emphasizes the difficulties with incineration of sludges from ECF processes.
Towards Zero..., with its 150 technical references, is not exactly the right pamphlet to pass to your next-door neighbour, but activists have a right to expect that regulators and mill managers have read this report and are ready to discuss the questions it raises.
If you have trouble accessing this report, Reach for Unbleached! can provide a photocopy for $5.00 including mailing.
* Reach for Unbleached! files.
Christine Wong says it will be another eighteen months or so before Arbokem Inc builds their new Canadian wheat straw pulping mill or the mill planned for the Bay area of California. The company currently operates an experimental (15,000 t) mill in Vulcan Alberta. The mill buys wheat straw from farms in a 50 mile radius. Pulping is done with potassium sulphite and bleaching with hydrogen peroxide. Fibre recovery from the straw is 50%. The mill is effluent-free: chemicals are recycled as much as possible, and the by-products (dissolved straw and potassium residues) used either as fertilizer or as filler in commercial foods.
The "agri-pulp" is then shipped to a mill in Quebec, where Arbokem rents a paper machine, and produces Downtown Paper - a combination of 45% agri-pulp (straw), 43% post-consumer waste, and 12% calcium carbonate filler. The multi-purpose paper is used for photocopy, text, cover and web press rolls and sells for $80 per 100 wt or $50 US per 5000 sheet carton.
* Arbokem Inc., PO Box 95014, South Vancouver CSC, Vancouver BC V6P 6V4; ph (604)322-1317; fax (604)322-5865; www.agripulp.com
In January Kafus Capital Corporation announced that its 82.5 percent owned subsidiary, Kenaf Paper Manufacturing ("KPM") has reached an agreement with Over Meccanica SpA., of Verona, Italy as construction contractor for a 70,000 tonne Kenaf newsprint mill in South Texas.
Kenaf is a fast growing member of the hibiscus family, a close relative to the cotton plant, that starting from seed, can mature at heights of 10'-14' in less than seven months. Kenaf stalks provide 2-3 times more fibre per acre per year than Southern pine, a paper industry staple.
* Kafus Corp. Press Release, Vancouver BC, January 1997
Monitoring Pulp and Paper Mills in British Columbia - A Citizens' Handbook. Stefan Ochman, 1997. ISBN 0-9680431-1-9, 118 pgs. $12.50 ($10 to Members)
This new Reach for Unbleached! publication is intended to foster communication between grassroots groups and technical experts around emissions from pulp and paper mills. It will increase the efficiency of local citizens in their efforts to lobby government and industry to protect environmental and health conditions in their communities.
The handbook gives the public the information and tools to implement regular pulp mill monitoring programs in their communities. It should also prove useful to pulp mill operators and government agencies in their endeavours to pay more than lip service to the concept of sustainability.
An overview of Canadian federal and provincial regulations and monitoring requirements is provided for effluents, air emissions and solid wastes. Tables summarizing effluent and air emissions for 13 mills in British Columbia Canada are published for the first time. Other sections deal with compliance and the harmonization agreement on effluents, regulation and monitoring in Ontario and the US, and missing monitoring programs.
In the overview of the MillWatch workshops held in 1996 in 10 mill towns in BC, various community monitoring activities are presented. Although specific to British Columbia, they are applicable in other parts of Canada and the world.
Reach for Unbleached! thinks this handbook is a must for anyone interested in pulp mill monitoring and community involvement. Order your copy now!
Celgar Pulp mill in Castlegar is facing more appeals from residents because it has applied for another permit to dump sludge on private land. Last year, the mill ran into the Krestova Sludge-Busters, who awoke one morning to find the fields next to their land steaming from newly-applied sludge. The appeal lost but now a Merry Creek Watershed Committee member says the new dump sites are within 200 metres of the creek, on land that slopes, in a residential area and might be used for growing vegetables or domestic lawn.
Reach for Unbleached! is setting up a special Sludge-Busters fund to help grassroots groups with phone and travel expenses as they fight this dispersal of industrial waste all over the province. Mark your cheque: Sludge-Busters.