 |
No. 15 April 1998 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
Search this site Campaigns Publications Technical  Pulp & Paper About Reach! Contact Us Links |
MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 15 - April 1998
Stone Lawsuit: $650,000 For Pollution Prevention
Cancer A Risk In Paper Mills
Deadly Effluent Continues
Particulate Emissions
Only Recycled For US Feds
Pryke Makes It!
Pulp Mill Scratched!
Sludgery Report
When Pollution Prevention Meets The Bottom Line
Reach! Vancouver
Thanks to Billy Stern, Native Forest Network, Montana; Laurie Valeriano, Washington Toxics Coalition, Seattle; Marc Johnson, Canadian Environmental Network Toxics Caucus; Eric Hummel, Ketchikan, Alaska; Janet Fout, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Huntington, WV, the Brainerd Foundation, our many donors, and all those in communities working to help their mill clean up.
In March, 16 Montana citizens' groups and Stone Container achieved a comprehensive $650,000 out-of- court settlement for pollution violations by the company's mill at Frenchtown, near Missoula, Montana.
Stone has agreed to spend $450,000 for environmental protection and cleanup, $150,000 to develop alternatives to burning chlorinated plastics generated by the mill's recycling plant, and to pay $50,000 in fines. Stone Container, over the next five years, must implement an innovative new pollution prevention program involving alternatives to chlorine bleaching, and the use of agricultural and recycled fibres. The company must hire an independent expert to certify its pollution prevention activities and citizens must be directly involved.In 1995, after hundreds of meetings over a thirty year time-span, and a petition supported by 11,000 citizens and over 200 businesses, the Montana Coalition for Health Environmental and Economic Rights (Montana CHEER), Native Forest Network and Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers sued Stone Container for hundreds of violations of federal Clean Air, Clean Water, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to- Know laws. In January 1996, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also filed suit. Another settlement for additional air violations is expected soon.
Charlie Tebbutt of the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene Oregon, who represented Montana CHEER, termed the agreement "one of the most comprehensive citizen settlements ever reached."Billy Stern of the Native Forest Network said, "Our goals in this settlement are to eliminate the mill's chlorine waste stream, increase Stone's use of recycled fibres, and - with the help of Montana's farmers and ranchers - develop a viable economic market for fibres from agricultural residues, especially straw."
* Montana CHEER Press Release, March 1998
A study of nearly 15,000 Danish paper mill workers has turned up higher incidences of Hodgkin's disease, pharyngeal cancer and soft-tissue sarcomas. The paper mill workers were employed between 1943 and 1990 at three paper mills.
Men who worked in the mills had more than double the expected risk of Hodgkin's disease and four times the risk of pharyngeal cancer. Female workers experienced higher rates for cancer of the pharynx, esophagus and mouth, and of soft-tissue sarcomas.
Researchers noted that in addition to paper dust, workers were exposed to dioxins, furans, and a variety of chlorinated organic compounds, which might have contributed to higher than average cancer rates. The study appeared in the January 1998 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The Sierra Legal Defence Fund, Great Lakes United, and the Quebec Environmental Law Centre revealed in January that, in 1996, 20 pulp and paper mills, including Tembec and Rolland in Quebec broke federal pollution standards by releasing effluent which killed fish, but were never charged.
The environmental groups were arguing that the provinces did not enforce federal law as agreed.
Companies responded that during 1996 they were "fine-tuning" their new pollution prevention equipment. An anonymous Environment Canada spokesman confirmed the test results, but said the companies had lowered their pollution by 50 per cent in 1997 over 1996, and both levels of government were focussed on the few polluting mills left.
Environment Canada also revealed that by April 1998 Irving Pulp and Paper would be in compliance with 1993 regulations forbidding the release of dioxin. The mill says it has installed $250 million of pollution control equipment including new processes such as "reverse osmosis."
* Montreal Gazette, Moncton Times January 1998
Environmental Elements Corporation has patented its Fine Particulate Agglomerator, which can be used by pulp and paper manufacturers to virtually eliminate the fine particulate from their gaseous emissions stream. EEC's Fine Particulate Agglomerator is a technology for the advanced control of fine submicron-sized particulate emissions from utility and industrial boilers.
* Contact E.H. Verdery, Environmental Elements, (410)368-6859
In February the US General Services Administration decided to end its long criticized policy of purchasing virgin copier paper for resale to US federal agencies, a practice which impeded compliance with President Clinton's Buy Recycled Executive Order (#12873). The decision to sell only recycled paper will have a tremendous impact on the government's compliance with the Buy Recycled order. More importantly, it will stimulate the market for recycled paper and decrease the government's harm to the environment.
Todd Paglia, Coordinator of the Government Purchasing Project, welcomed the move, saying, "Taxpayer dollars should be used to buy products that have fewer negative impacts on the environment." Paglia called on the government to "move beyond paper" and make similar purchasing decisions on other environmentally preferable products.
* Contact Todd J. Paglia, Government Purchasing Project, PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; ph: (202)387-8030 Todd@gpp.org; http://www.gpp.org
Douglas Pryke, Executive Director of the Alliance for Environmental Technology (AET) , has been named a TAPPI fellow for exceptional service to the pulp and paper industry. TAPPI has 33,000 members and 12 technical divisions, forming the world's largest scientific and technical association for the industry. Pryke graduated from UBC and worked for Weyerhaeuser before beginning ground-breaking work on a closed cycle kraft mill at Thunder Bay in the late 1970s. The experiment was discontinued in the early 1980s, but yielded valuable information.
By 1987, Pryke was an independent consultant on bleaching and in 1993 became Executive Director of the AET. AET is an international association of chemical manufacturers and pulp companies "established to create a clearinghouse of information relating to chlorine dioxide and its use in pulp bleaching."
North American consumption of sodium chlorate, used to manufacture chlorine dioxide for pulp bleaching, has gone from 642 thousand metric tons in 1987 to an estimated 1,683 thousand metric tons in 1998, at a value of over $500 US per ton.
TAPPI particularly recognizes Pryke for "providing international leadership in environmental technology and policy making," and "bringing rational analysis" to questions concerning pulp bleaching and the environment.
* MillWatch files and AET News Splash, Winter 1997
| "What would it be like to have a PULP & PAPER MILL in your neighbourhood? ... If you want to know just how rotten a deal we're getting, scratch and sniff the box to the right." |
After nearly a decade-long battle, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, who led the organizing effort to oppose the construction of a huge, chlorine-based pulp and paper mill at Apple Grove (Mason County, West Virginia, has declared victory over Parsons & Whittemore. At midnight on December 17, 1997, West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoked the permits. The company withdrew the permits on the same day. The controversy was especially intense from January 1993 until December 1997.
The company stated that it was withdrawing its application because the Asian market meltdown has created poor financial outlooks for new mills at this time. The mill was fought by dedicated family environmentalists who appealed every permit issued to the mill, with the help of local lawyers working pro bono. A wide social coalition of groups threw their help into the struggle. These groups included:
Janet Fout, project coordinator for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, stressed the importance of the coalition. "My biggest lesson is that people can make a difference if they work together. These companies and the state should understand the power of the people and an effective press."
* Janet K. Fout, c/o Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, 1101 Sixth Avenue, Suite 222, Huntington, WV 25701; ph: (304)522-0246; fax (304)523-6051; email: jfout@access.mountain.net
In British Columbia, the Pulp Mill Sludge Committee has been meeting regularly since September 1996, but resolution of the issue of pulp mill sludge disposal remains distant.
At the moment there are only a few land-spreading schemes in motion in BC, or anywhere in North America. In Europe, the very idea is a no go, due to stringent regulations to prevent the accumulation of heavy metals where people have farmed for hundreds of years. In Alberta, totally chlorine free newsprint mill sludge is composted for several months and then spread. In BC, most mills and regions are proceeding with great caution and some common sense.
Burning permits are too numerous to name, and often not required. It is notable that Crestbrook Forest Products recently removed the sludge provisions from their application for a co generation project burning wood waste at the Skookcumchuck pulp mill, preferring to divide the application into two separate issues.
Meanwhile, the United States has been rocked by the revelation that hazardous waste from steel mills, pulp mills and chemical plants is shipped out of the factory for "recycling" into commercial fertilizers with extraordinarily high levels of dioxin, lead, mercury, and many other poisons.
Citizens and workers at the Sludge committee agree that the ideal solution would be to spread pulp mill sludge, with its valuable humus, back on the fields and forests, but only if the sludge can be proven clean and safe for workers, future generations, and the environment.
We do not know what chemicals are in the sludge and we do not know what the long term impact on the environment might be.
Nonetheless, industry and government are moving ahead with development of a "guideline" which allows "clean" sludge to be spread everywhere, even on residential properties. Nor will you know, when you buy land in BC, if it has been treated with pulp mill sludge, so you will not know whether to avoid crops or livestock which are sensitive to particular contaminants.
Industry refuses to do the research which would answer our questions. This irresponsible and dangerous tactic is unacceptable. We need a sludge spreading moratorium until independent research has been conducted. The proper precautions must be taken to protect our health.
* Delores Broten, Reach for Unbleached!
If manufacturers could reduce waste and emissions and cut costs at the same time, they would jump at the chance, right? Unfortunately this is not always the case. In a 1993 pollution prevention pilot program begun by the US Natural Resources Defense Council, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Amoco, and Rayonier Paper, participants wanted to know the reason for the lack of implementation of promising pollution prevention techniques.
A test study was done at a Dow Chemical factory in La Porte, Texas, which produces methylene diamine diisocyanate (MDI), the major ingredient of foamed and thermoplastic polyurethane.
The plant felt it had addressed all possible waste and emissions reduction measures, but in the end, the assessment team had a number of short-term pollution reduction suggestions.
Any problem in adopting this plan lay within the company itself. The project was considered for adoption two times and was put off in favour of other, more financially attractive business opportunities.
Had EPA required that Dow reduce these waste streams, the projects would have been mandatory, and the rate of return of the projects would have been irrelevant. However, because these were voluntary opportunities, they were considered in the same way as other business opportunities. To succeed, these opportunities needed to do more than reduce waste and save money: they needed to be superior to other options for capital investment.
* Linda Greer and Christopher Van Loben Sels, "When Pollution Prevention Meets the Bottom Line," Environmental Science and Technology, Sept. 1997
Our new office in Vancouver is located at 1672 East Tenth Ave., V5N 1X5. You can reach Jay Ritchlin or Miranda Holmes there at (604) 879-2279.
The Reach for Unbleached! Annual General meeting will be held on Cortes Island, British Columbia on Sunday May 31st at 2:00 pm. Voting members and volunteers are welcome. A report will be sent to those unable to attend. MillWatch BY EMAIL To receive MillWatch by email, send email to <majordomo@onenw.org> with the message: subscribe MillWatch <your email address>