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No. 16 June 1998 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
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MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 16 - June 1998
US Greens Challenge Cluster Rules in Court
New Look For www.conservatree.com
'Way To Go, Overwaitea'
Indonesia Forest Collapse
MB Sells BC Mills
Jefferson Smurfit Buys Stone
Leaks And Spills In New Zealand
Port Alice BC Chlorine Leak
Irving Mill NB Charged For Fish Kill
Claim To Shame: Voluntary Pollution Prevention Not Working Too Well
Weyco Gets P2 Prize
Environment Canada Lost
PA Mill Gets Upgrade
Innovative Waste Disposal Features Lignosulfonate
Thanks to Billy Stern, Native Forest Network, Montana; Laurie Valeriano, Washington Toxics Coalition, Seattle; Marc Johnson, Canadian Environmental Network Toxics Caucus; Georgia Strait Alliance; the Brainerd Foundation; our many donors; and all those in communities working to help their mill clean up.
American conservation groups are suing to demand that the US Environmental Protection Agency tighten the "Cluster Rules" which limit pulp and paper industry discharges.
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF), its state affiliate, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Clark Fork- Pend Oreille Coalition, the American Canoe Association, and the Penobscot Nation, charge that EPA's selection of the most lenient of three available approaches to reducing toxic by-products of the paper bleaching process violates the Clean Water Act by not adopting the "best available technology" as the law requires.
"EPA has a legal and moral obligation to protect people and the environment from the dangers of these chemicals," said NWF President Mark Van Putten. "It does not have the option of staying with the status quo simply because the industry prefers it."
EPA's recently-published "cluster rule" locks the US pulp and paper industry into a chlorine-based process, accepting chlorine dioxide bleaching, at a time that foreign mills are adopting more cost-efficient and environmentally sound technologies.
The groups argue that by incorporating oxygen delignification, the second option would have dramatically reduced water pollution and taken the industry one step closer to Totally Chlorine Free technology, which is the environmental best-case scenario.
According to EPA's own draft assessment, human health threats linked to the chemicals in question include increased rates of cancer, reproductive abnormalities, impaired immune systems, and learning and behavioral disorders. Children are most vulnerable, as they can become exposed in utero and while nursing when their bodily systems are in delicate stages of development. Serious health effects have also been observed in mammals, birds, and fish, including birds with crossed bills, fish with tumours, eggshell thinning, and other reproductive problems.
EPA's own analysis shows that more than 90% of existing mills could afford to implement the oxygen delignification process.
"EPA's decision might even harm companies in the long run by encouraging an investment in antiquated technology," said NRDC Senior Attorney Jessica Landman. "It actually creates a disincentive to work toward the Clean Water Act goal of zero discharge. We intend to make sure that the industry invests in newer technology to protect people and wildlife."
* National Wildlife Federation, May 1998
In 1997 Conservatree, the San Francisco based company that was synonymous with recycled papers in California, closed, but now there are promises of new non-profit rebirth. Former employee Susan Kinsella expects to have lots of up-to-date information for those seeking recycled environmentally-friendly printing and writing papers on a new mega-site web page at www.conservatree.com. Susan is joined at the "new" Conservatree by Gerard Gleason, who researched the paper markets for Conservatree's comprehensive annual guide of more than 500 environmentally sound printing and writing papers for the past 8 years. The effort is needed. Susan points out that recycled paper sales have fallen to 7% of US totals in the last few years.
In April environmental groups throughout BC congratulated supermarket chain Overwaitea for giving shoppers the option to purchase a new line of recycled toilet paper which has not been bleached with chlorine or chlorinated compounds. The paper, Western Family house brand 'Premium Soft' 100% recycled, is available at Save On Foods and Overwaitea stores throughout BC and Alberta.
In 1995, Scott Paper withdrew their line of recycled toilet paper, saying there was no consumer demand for this product, but now, thanks to the Overwaitea order, Scott's back in the clean paper making business. Reach for Unbleached! Tissue Issue co-ordinator Alice Grange says that now it's time to focus on Safeway.
The timber empires of Bob Hasan and other Indonesians are crumbling amid the economic crisis in Indonesia. In January, before the emergency, a third of the country's timber companies were facing bankruptcy and Hasan's Kalimanis Group said it had been forced to lay off thousands of workers.
The Forestry Minister said that most timber firms had stopped operations by January because operational costs were higher than earnings. "I have received a report that at least 5.9 million cubic metres of cut logs remain untouched in forests," he said. Pulp producer APRIL, controlled by Sukanto Tanoto of the Raja Garuda Mas Group, was reported to have lost an investment deal with Finnish UPM- Kymmene.
The repackaged IMF bail-out targeted Suharto buddy Hasan's stranglehold on the Indonesian forest industry. Hasan's producer and marketing cartels had put him in control of the nation's forests. The IMF also insisted that the Reforestation Fund, used to help fund Bob Hasan's Kiani Keras pulp mill in East Kalimantan, must be accounted for in the state budget from now on.
* Kompas, South China Morning Post, Financial Times, January 1998, via World Rainforest Movement, (Movimiento Mundial Por Los Bosques) March 1998.
MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. has sold MB Paper Ltd. for $850 million to an eastern investment company. Management and employees will stay with the new company, which will be renamed Pacifica Papers Inc. and will open on May 30, pending approval. The sale includes both US and Canadian assets, including Alberni Specialties and the Powell River Division.
In May Jefferson Smurfit Corp. announced plans to buy Stone Container Corp. for $6.42 billion to form the world's largest paper-packaging company, Smurfit- Stone Container Corp. The combination would create the fourth-largest US paper and forest products company, with annual sales of more than $8 billion and products ranging from cardboard boxes to cartons for frozen dinners. The top three US paper companies are International Paper Co., Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Weyerhaeuser Co. Jefferson Smurfit is 46.5 per cent-owned by Ireland's Jefferson Smurfit Group. The companies expect to generate $2.5 billion from asset sales, including Stone's 25% stake in Abitibi-Consolidated in Canada, to reduce the debt.
* Bloomberg News May 1998
In late April and early May the Kinleith Pulp & Paper mill in New Zealand exposed workers to three serious chlorine dioxide leaks. The mill is owned by Carter Holt Harvey, a subsidiary of International Paper and uses chlorine dioxide and oxygen bleach.
The first leak of chlorine dioxide on April 26 after a fire broke out in the mill resulted in 25 workers being treated for "minor exposure to the gas."
Even more seriously on May 3, workers were evacuated after "Partial decomposition of the chlorine dioxide generator resulted in a puff of chlorine dioxide from the generator safety hatch" according to the New Zealand Press Association report.
* Greenpeace New Zealand
The British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks has announced charges against Western Pulp Limited Partnership for a chlorine release at the company's Port Alice pulp mill. Charges were laid in February following a " chlorine release" during the unloading of a rail car. The discharge occurred as a result of a torn chemical transfer line. The company was charged for discharging effluent and air contaminants into the environment under the Waste Management Act.
* BC Environment Ministry Press Release, March 1998
The Irving Pulp and Paper Ltd. mill at Reversing Falls, Saint John, New Brunswick has been charged with polluting the St. John River with effluents that kill fish. Environment Canada officials seized the toxic effluent at the main plant.
* Saint John Telegraph Journal, May 1998
Claim To Shame: Voluntary Pollution Prevention Not Working Too Well
One-fourth of the US industries that handle the highest amounts of toxic waste increased the amount of waste they managed by more than 30% in recent years, pointing to a widespread lack of progress in pollution prevention, according to a study, entitled Claim to Shame. Prepared by the National Environmental Law Center and the US Public Interest Research Group, the study was based on Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data from 1992 to 1995 for the 277 industry sectors.
The study of TRI found "a high degree of variation" among industry sectors, and showed that the total amount of waste handled in the US remained stagnant, dropping only from 18.8 billion pounds in 1992 to 18.7 billion pounds in 1995. The study concludes that companies are investing more in incineration, toxics reprocessing and other waste-management technologies rather than in "fundamental" production changes to curb the generation of toxics. But the groups noted that one-fifth of the industry sectors studied reported that they reduced production-related waste by more than 30% from 1992 to 1995.
* For more information, contact US PIRG, 215 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003; (202)546-9707; fax: (202)546-2461; www.pirg.org.
For the second year, Weyerhaeuser has won the American Forest & Paper Association's Environment and Energy Achievement Award for Pollution Prevention. Weyerhaeuser's Flint River, Ga., pulp mill received the award for achieving significant overall pollution reductions, including 41% in solid waste, 32% in effluent and 13% in air emissions. The mill also saved more than $600,000 in expenses.
Weyerhaeuser's Flint River mill is the only mill to be accepted into the EPA's Project XL, (eXcellence and Leadership), which exchanges regulatory flexibility in exchange for superior environmental performance.
* Weyerhaeuser Press Release, Frank Mendizabal, 253-924-3357
The federal government is not living up to its responsibility to protect the environment from polluters and runs the risk of being held liable for its failure to enforce key laws, says Enforcing Canada's Pollution Laws: The Public Interest Must Come First! a Commons Standing Committee On Environment And Sustainable Development report released in May. Environment Canada's budget has been reduced by about 40 per cent in recent years. Recent reports from the NAFTA-created Commission for Environmental Co-operation have cited Ontario as one of the worst polluters on the continent.
Weyerhaeuser will invest $315 million in a new recovery boiler at its 30-year-old Prince Albert, Saskatchewan mill, and convert an older unit to a power generator burning wood waste to bring the mill into compliance with environmental regulations. The company said the re-fit will be completed by the year 2000, and noted, "So we have to start now to get it done." The mill will also get a new landfill. The upgrade will create 300 construction jobs and reduce about 90 per cent of the mill's odour and particulate emissions. The mill will also cut the amount of natural gas it burns by 80 per cent.
* Saskatoon Star Phoenix, May 1998
Dombind, the contaminant-laden pulp mill waste from the Norampac mill in Trenton, Ontario is given away to about 70 Ontario townships to use as a dust suppressant on rural roads. The company describes Dombind as "distilled tree sap, very much like maple syrup." But in May the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) served pancakes laced with Dombind in front of the Ministry of Environment offices to emphasize that dioxin levels on and near Ontario back country roads sprayed with the pulp mill waste had risen substantially from 1994 to 1996, according to the company's own tests. WWF urged the Ministry not to renew the company's authorization for this waste disposal programme.
Dombind is made from waste black liquor, lignosulfonate, an industrial waste which it is no longer legal to dump into the nation's rivers. According to a report produced by the Cortes Island Environment Committee, lignosulfonate can vary depending on the process by which it is produced. In 1989 it reported:
"Lignosulfonates are peddled in the market place under many names -- sodium lignosulfonate, sulfonated lignin sodium salt, UF 10000A, Urzan, Vanicell, Vanisperse, Wanin S, etc. They show up in animal feed, pellets, in the wax lining of milk cartons, as glue in food packaging, in gyproc, particle board, plywood, and even in food itself. Vanillin, an artificial vanilla flavouring, is a by-products of lignosulfonate." Except for a short time when Quebec found samples of ligno contaminated with dioxin, it has been considered "safe," although it is toxic to fish and to wild animals which are attracted to its sweet taste.
BC taxpayers may well envy the deal in Ontario where the industrial waste is spread for free. About 4.5 million litres of a product called BC Stabiliser, mostly purchased from US mills, are sprayed on northern BC gravel roads every year.
* World Wildlife Fund, Globe & Mail, May 1998