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No. 27 August 2000 News for All Interested in Featuring |
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No. 27 August 2000 News for All Interested in Featuring |
Search this site Campaigns Publications Technical Pulp & Paper About Reach! Contact Us Links |
MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 27 - August 2000
Good Paper, Bad Mess: Atlantic Sludge in Ontario
Potlatch Lawsuit Settled
National Pollution Release Inventory Improved
Thunder Bay Packaging Convicted and Fined
UK Newspapers Agree to 70% Recycled Content
Tribe Tests of Water Led To Discovery of Polluting Mills
Be a Sludge Buster
About us
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The rolling Durham farmland northeast of Toronto no longer has fields coated with blue-grey paper sludge. Here and there, stockpiles still stand, but the flow of waste has slowed to a trickle. A program that boasted of hundreds of farms signed up to receive paper mill residues from Atlantic Packaging Mills in Scarborough and Whitby has slouched into a program delivering the wastes to only a handful of farms, most of them owned by the waste hauler, Harvey (Skip) Ambrose, who owns Ontario Disposal.
In the early 1990's Atlantic Packaging set up two recycling mills, taking waste paper from around the world and turning it into tissue paper, hand towelling, beer box cardboard, and newsprint. But recycling mills are waste intensive. Every tonne of product means an equal tonne of waste sludge: unusable clay, short paper fibre, ink and dye residue, and an unknown number of chemicals.
Through the last decade the Province of Ontario, in an effort to conserve landfill capacity, promoted the diversion of bulky wastes, like paper sludge, into other forms of disposal. Suddenly toxic waste residue was reborn as "organic soil conditioner," and the Ministry helped mills around the province to plan land application of sludge on farms, pasture, and forested lands. The program required the mills to hire consultants to demonstrate that the sludge has a "soil benefit."
However, Atlantic Packaging, aided by optimistic (and permissive) Ministry of Environment administrators was allowed to sign up farmers for land application before any soil benefit was proven. Nor was it easy to show benefit. Recycled paper sludge is very low in nitrogen. When most crops prosper in a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20 to 1, Atlantic Packaging sludge is 240 to 1. The carbon material eats up available nitrogen from the soil and causes nitrogen deficiency in the crop.
For ten years neighbours mocked sludge-spread fields, pointing to stunted growth and yellowed leaves. Grim-jawed Ministry of Environment officials pointed fingers at the farmers muttering about poor farm practices and insisting that the sludge could somehow improve crops, but they couldn't determine how.
Rural residents from Beaverton, Sunderland, and Cannington created an environmental group called the Brock Land Stewards who petitioned the government for accountability in the program. At times the task seemed overwhelming. "The battle has been waged for nearly ten years and consumed many people in its wake. It is hard to maintain a battle against corporate giants and government bureaucracies," says Chairman Don Whitcombe. "But then we'd take it up again with new leadership and go another round."
The result of the citizen accountability campaign was that toxic substances in the sludge, from dioxin to nonylphenol, were identified. Pasture application was stopped. Stockpiling was limited. Last year the Ministry of the Environment gave the company two more years to prove a benefit. To this point no benefit has been established. A final report should be available in the spring of 2001. The outlook for demonstrating benefit is not promising.
While the Ministry gave Atlantic a decade to demonstrate soil benefit, the marketplace acted more quickly. "They just can't get rid of enough sludge on farmland any more so they are looking for other methods of cheap disposal," says Whitcombe.
Since Atlantic can't get rid of much as "soil conditioner," they are now calling it "Soundsorb" and promoting it as a material to make sound berms. Now mountains of sludge are sitting on the hauler's property decomposing and leaching into the aquifer. All this causes much concern to local residents.
The rolling fields of Durham are getting greener again. Scugog town councillor and farmer David Dietlein said, "The public has made up its mind. They don't want paper sludge. But this government hasn't got the message yet." Some of the neighbourhood farmers privately berate themselves for ever taking it on their farms. But the struggle continues elsewhere.
In Clarington , near Oshawa, where mountains of Atlantic Packaging sludge decompose in a private gravel pit, rural residents are buying bottled water, organizing meetings, and asking the Ministry to make the piles of sludge go away.
* Maureen Reilly; (705)438-1456
In late July Idaho conservation groups announced the settlement of a lawsuit challenging the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) extension of the expired Potlatch pulp mill waste water discharge permit. The groups said the EPA had not weighed the effects of the pollution on threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, EPA will complete a Biological Assessment, required under the Endangered Species Act, and submit it to the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by November 1.
EPA has proposed a new permit for the mill's pollution that would require compliance with Idaho's and Washington's state water quality standards, including a limit on the temperature of the discharge during summer months. Potlatch currently discharges over 40 million gallons per day of polluted water at temperatures up to 92 degrees F under terms of the expired 1992 permit.
"Studies elsewhere show that discharges such as Potlatch's cause a thermal barrier to fish migration," said Mark Solomon, longtime Potlatch environmental monitor. "Common sense says you don't help an endangered species by forcing it to swim through a heated toxic soup."
* Laird Lucas, ph: (208)342-7024; Mark Solomon (208)699-2658
Environment Canada is adding Dioxin (PCTD/TF) and Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) reporting to the National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI), including from "combustion of hog fuel originating from logs that were transported or stored in salt water in the pulp and paper sector;" and "combustion of fuel in kraft liquor boilers used in the pulp and paper sector."
There is no minimum trigger amount for PCTD/TF or HCB. The dioxin reporting will be in TEQ for seven congeners and ten congeners of furans. Interestingly, the Environment Canada "Response to Multistakeholders" about release level reporting notes that, "Some industry members hold that paper processors should be exempt regardless of how the rules are configured." However, the government didn't buy that.
In further emissions of interest to pulp and paper activists, the NPRI will also now gather info on 17 PAHS generated in more than a total of 50 kg, partly to satisfy UN Treaty requirements and also to harmonize with the EPA. The government emphasizes: "The federal government has identified all PAHs as CEPA-toxic substances, although the Priority Substances List assessment was limited to 13 compounds ..."
Mercury must now also be reported if more than 5 kg. is released. Dentists are exempted. The following substances were also added: Acrolein and Polymeric Diphenylmethane Diisocyanate (PMDI) as are two more nonylphenols and refractory ceramic fibres.
* Delores Broten
In May Thunder Bay Packaging was fined $50,000 for two violations of the Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations under the federal Fisheries Act. Twenty thousand dollars will go to the Thunder Bay Remedial Action Plan and $25,000 will be used by Confederation College to establish an "Ontario Environmental Law Enforcement Bursary."
One of the two charges related to a deposit of acutely lethal effluent into Lake Superior in June 1998. The other charge was based on the mill's failure to monitor its effluent in the manner prescribed by the Regulations.
The charges were laid by Environment Canada following an investigation by the Ontario Region Office of the department's Environmental Protection Branch.
* For further information: Brad May, Environment Canada, (416)739-5901, email Bradley.May@ec.gc.ca
UK newspaper publishers have agreed to increase the average amount of recycled content in newspapers to 60 percent by the end of 2001, and with a goal of 70 percent recycled paper content by the end of 2006.
This announcement marks a new phase of the voluntary agreement which publishers entered into 10 years ago with the government. The agreement has resulted in an increase in the levels of recycled content in newspapers in the last decade from 28 percent to 52.4 percent.
The recycled fibre will come from British recycling mills supported by the newspapers.
* April 2000
In June, Champion International was fined $800,000 for falsifying records and not having the proper licenses to operate two of its mills in Maine. Penobscot Nation water quality monitors were puzzled by the readings they were getting downstream from one of the mills. Subsequent investigations revealed that the Costigan mill had not done a simple water test for up to eight years, but continued to record the result of that test daily, according to a consent agreement settling the matter. In addition, when Champion bought the mill in 1985, the company failed to apply to the DEP to transfer the license from the mill's previous owners, St. Regis Paper.
Champion also did not apply for a discharge license for its Passadumkeag mill, which has been in operation since 1997.
The Tribe said the case bolstered its arguments for joint monitoring and enforcement between the tribe and the federal government, instead of involving State authorities.
Since the late 1980s, the tribe has had a $91,000 a year contract with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to monitor water quality along the Penobscot River. Each week, water samples are taken from 84 sites on the river and 30 locations along tributaries. Samples are also taken from nine ponds in the Penobscot watershed. The Penobscot also receive $140,000 annually from the EPA for water quality monitoring and $120,000 a year to work on nonpoint source pollution problems and $110,000 to work on general environmental issues.
The Penobscot Nation also feels that the $800,000 fine levied against Champion was not high enough. State law provides that the company could be fined up to $10,000 per day for each violation found. The state found four violations, one of which - the falsification of reports - went on for a period of three to eight years. In 1999 the company received a little more than $800,000 from the state in business assistance tax breaks.
* The Bangor News, July 2000
Got a field full of stinking slop in your neighbourhood? Near a place you like to hunt, fish, hike or canoe? Or near your drinking water? Contact Reach for Unbleached! and let us know! If you live in Canada, we will do our best to find out if it is coming from a pulp mill, if it is legal, and what you can do to stop it. Just put the time, date and location of the suspect sludge in your note. If you have more details, like who is trucking it in and where it is coming from, include those, too!
* More details on our Sludge Buster page.