MillWatch No. 31 April 2001 News for All Interested in Clean Pulp and Paper Production Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts

Home Page  Search this site Campaigns  Publications  Technical  Pulp & Paper  About Reach!  Contact Us  Links

---

(You may SEARCH this page using your browser's FIND command)

---

MillWatch table of contents

MillWatch No. 31 - April 2001

Energy Blues
It's Not Too Late! Join The Bulk Office Paper Buying Club
Green Resolutions For Weyco
Fort James Camas Air Permit
Dombind Sticks Like Glue To Ontario Roads
New Canada Dioxin Inventory Includes Salty Hog Ash
Co-generation And Other Wood Waste, Burning Schemes: What's The Problem?

About us
How to request brochures, subscribe, donate, or volunteer

(You may SEARCH this page using your browser's FIND command)

MillWatch is sponsored by Reach for Unbleached! Canada to connect people and provide resources for those working on pulp and paper issues. If you have information, experience, or problems you want to share, this forum is meant to spread the word, but it needs your help. Write to us!

As the price of energy rose this winter, pulp mills in the Pacific Northwest began to show the effects of energy blues, and to transmit those blues to their neighbours.

Smurfit-Stone in Missoula shut down its No.1 linerboard machine, laying off 30 workers, due to the high cost of Montana's deregulated electricity. The mill requires 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity, half of which is locked into a five year contract from Enron. The mill generates another 10 MW with on site diesel generators at $100 a MW, but faces costs of up to $280 a MW to purchase the remaining 15 MW. Smurfit Stone was reportedly looking into natural gas, or more diesel generators.

It was the generators which were the final straw for Georgia Pacific in Bellingham Washington. Shortly after the mayor was forced by public complaints to shut down the 42 new diesel generators on which the centre-town mill was trying to run, Georgia Pacific announced it was permanently closing its pulp and chemical operations. It will continue to use 15 generators to run its toilet tissue mill.

In March, Crestbrook Pulp in Skookumchuk announced that its new $50 million German turbine, designed to burn wood waste from surrounding sawmills, will generate enough electricity to make the mill self-sufficient, sell power to BC Hydro, and save between $5 and $10 million a year. The East Kootenay Environmental Society, approving of the closure of the beehive burners that have plagued surrounding small towns, watch dogged this permit and ensured that the mill was not to burn sludge, other waste products or contaminated wood. East Kootenay said it would also keep on eye on logging plans to ensure that the turbine did not stimulate extra "wood waste."

Low water levels in BC Hydro's Williston Reservoir could cause the shutdown of Mackenzie's two pulp mills. A plan to draw water down to 2,140 feet in order to generate electricity would leave the mills without operating water, and also would trigger stricter effluent quality requirements. Due to low rains, the reservoir is now at 2160 feet, and there is less snow pack than usual to refill it. BC Hydro has other generating options including running Burrard Thermal at higher capacity.

In the wake of sky-rocketing natural gas prices, the Norske Skog mills at Crofton and Campbell River decided to sacrifice local air quality and residents, health by selling their supply of natural gas, and burning oil instead. The company's president of pulp confirmed that this practice had been followed in December and the company intended to continue it "when opportunities arise."

The Elk Falls mill followed up by applying to the Ministry of Environment for a three month approval to "experiment" with burning coal, a move which burned the neighbours.

Interestingly, a BC report from 1992, Greenhouse Gas Inventories and Management Options, had estimated that BC mills could save 6345 kilo tonnes per year of carbon dioxide emission (on top of using natural gas, wood waste and black liquor), by following through with general efficiency measures and process changes, including "diversion from kraft to recycle or mechanical pulping techniques."

Meanwhile in a sterling example of alternative technology, Abitibi Consolidated in Ontario announced it will save $250,000 a year by buying methane gas from a Niagara Falls landfill site as a substitute for nonrenewable fossil fuels. The methane, a potent Green House Gas when it escapes unburned into the atmosphere, will be used to generate steam for Abitibi's Thorold newsprint mill, 4 kilometres from the landfill.

Perhaps the market that will determine the industry's fate is the energy market.

* Delores Broten, and North Island Weekender, January 2001, Prince George Citizen, Vancouver Sun, King 5 TV, March 2001, Hamilton Spectator, April 2001.

The Paper: Rolland New Life Dual Purpose
80% recycled content with 60% post consumer
80% Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) & 20% Totally Chlorine Free (TCF)
Excellent copy and printer paper

The Price:
$58.25 per case plus taxes and delivery

Why a Bulk Buying Club?

• To Lower the price of the paper
• To Prove that a market exists
• To Encourage BC mills to make clean paper

* For more information phone/fax (250) 935-6992, or dbroten@rfu.org
A joint venture of the Reach for Unbleached! Foundation and Paper Choice

At its annual meeting in April, Weyerhaeuser faces two environmental resolutions from shareholders. The Sisters of the Humility of Mary in Pennsylvania want the company to disclose to shareholders its assessment of environmental liabilities and risks. In a second resolution, the Adrian Dominican Sisters of Michigan and five other groups request that the Board of Directors report to the 2002 annual meeting on the company's bleach processes, detailing the steps required to phase out the use of all chlorinated bleaching chemicals.

The Board recommends that shareholders vote against both proposals, explaining that the company has installed oxygen delignification, extended digester cooking, and 100% chlorine dioxide bleaching at most of its mills, reducing environmental risk. The company cites the Alliance for Environmental Technology but does not mention that the Alliance is funded by pulp and chemical companies, notably manufacturers of the chlorate used to make chlorine dioxide.

* Notice of 2001 Annual Meeting of Shareholders and Proxy Statement, Weyerhaeuser

In 1990, the US Congress passed amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA) requiring that each state develop an operating permit program that meets requirements stipulated in the act, Title V Air Operating Permits (AOP).

The Clean Air Act requires that the permitting agency must provide an opportunity for public comment on a proposed AOP. If the permit is issued, any person who submitted comments during the public comment period may petition the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for corrective action. EPA then has sixty days to either deny or grant the petition, triggering changes to the permit.

In January 1999, the Washington State Department of Ecology released a draft air permit for the Fort James mill in Camas, Washington. After comments about the inadequacy of the compliance assurance features of the draft permit were ignored, a petition was filed with EPA in November requesting parts of the permit be reissued to comply with the Clean Air Act. EPA failed to respond within the required sixty days.

After some prodding by Richard Smith of Smith & Downey, PLLC, on December 22, 2000, the EPA administrator signed an order partially granting the specific requests made in the petition. Of 21 items examined, ten were denied because Ecology made voluntary revisions and/or provided additional data; three were denied because the petitioner "failed to demonstrate that they were not protective of human health and the environment" and eight were granted.

* Carl Larkins, Port Angeles WA

The Ontario government has extended the approval for Norampac in Trenton to give away Dombind, a waste liquor used on rural Ontario roads as a dust suppressant, for a further two years. After the World Wildlife Fund released information two years ago showing that Dombind contained dioxin, the government had promised to stop its use by the end of 2000. In 1993, the government had given the company five years to phase out its use and find other ways to dispose of it. Norampac recently won a court order that quashed an Environment Ministry's field order barring use of Dombind on Ontario roads. Ministry guidelines dictate that the substance be kept 50 metres away from ponds, streams and rivers. As much as 100 million litres a year of the sticky material has been used on gravel roads for more than 40 years.

* Ottawa Citizen, November 2000

In previous inventories, the large amounts of dioxin in coastal pulp mill ash, a result of burning salty hog fuel, was left off the totals of the Dioxin Inventory and just appeared in a separate row at the bottom as "Dioxin in Product" along with the dioxin in pentachlorophenol. Reach for Unbleached! has objected to this arrangement for years, since it effectively left the 106 grams of dioxin in ash out of the inventory totals. We argued that the landfills weren't secure forever, and that a Free Trade in toxic waste loomed under NAFTA. Now, in the December 2000 draft second edition the deadly residue is counted as part of the 1098 grams of "Dioxin in Solid Waste."

* Reach for Unbleached! files

The BC forest products industry produces about 5 million bone dry tonnes of wood residue every year, with about 33% of this sawdust, 13% shavings, and 4% trim and yard waste. To date in BC, much of this waste, which amounts to almost 25% of the Annual Allowable Cut, has been disposed of by burning in beehive burners at the mills, contributing a number of pollutants to the atmosphere.

Emissions associated with wood burning include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), carbon monoxide (CO), fine particulate (PM10), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and ozone (O3). Health effects associated with these substances include angina, bronchial congestion, cancer, respiratory irritation and illness, and fibrotic changes in the lungs.

With breathing ailments like asthma on a sharp increase throughout Canada, and the air quality of small communities rapidly deteriorating (the BC government's State of the Environment Report a couple of years ago pointed out that Merritt's air quality was worse than that of London, England), the government decided to take action.

In 1993 the BC government initiated a "Wood Residue Management Policy" which called for the phase-out of beehive burners in "smoke-sensitive areas" by December 31, 1995, with all remaining burners to be phased out by the end of 2004. These dates have since been adjusted, and readjusted, with the result that most mills continue to burn waste on-site in beehive burners, at a cost of about $2 to $7.50 per tonne of wood burned.

The cost of producing energy from wood waste is about $.07/kilowatt hour, and before the recent gas hikes, mills could buy energy for about $.03/kilowatt hour, so co-gen was seen as economically unviable. The Ministry of Energy, Mines and Resources was not supportive of co-gen, and neither was BC Hydro.

Since the recent energy price hikes, however, the burning of wood waste to produce energy has become more attractive to mills, utilities, and the government. Waste incineration for energy production has never been solely about electricity, anyway; industry and government are desperate to find new places and ways to dispose of waste, not only for the forest industry, but for all manufacturing sectors, as well as for municipal and agricultural wastes.

Alternatives to burning identified by the Task Force on Sawmill Residue Management include: particle board; medium density fibreboard; oriented strand board; insulation board; hardboard; cement board; horticulture/agriculture; landscaping; composting; absorbants; sewage treatment; chemical extractives (ethanol, methanol, liquids, gas); fuel pellets for wood stoves and industrial boilers; floor cleaners; mushroom bedding; cat litter; asphalt roofing; cattle fodder; animal bedding; trail surfacing; turf management.

Alternatives to creating large volumes of wood waste include: leaving more unusable debris at the landing; using finer saws and more exacting milling procedures; selective logging for trees with more usable volumes; taking more care in log-handling; sorting residues more completely; using economic instruments to make incineration less viable than alternatives to incineration. It is important to recognize that the current paradigm is based on waste, and on limited cost-accounting. Simply saying, "We have all this wood waste, so we might as well produce energy" does not justify the waste.

The idea that no net carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced by wood waste incineration, because if the wood naturally decomposed it would emit the same amount of CO2, is illogical because it doesn't account for the time factor. Burning 5 million bone dry tonnes of wood waste per year is quite different from the slow decomposition of the same volume over time.

Kamloops Case Study:

The Kamloops area (Thompson-Nicola Regional District) already has very high levels of airborne particulate matter (PM10), leading BC with emissions of about 82,000 tonnes per year of particulate. VOCs are also a concern, as the regional district's loading is currently about 92,000 tonnes per year, and carbon monoxide is already at 79,000 tonnes per year.

The facility and volumes proposed by Weyerhaeuser Kamloops would result in a 171% increase in carbon monoxide emissions to the local airshed, and a similar increase in NOx, SO2, and VOCs.

Although air quality in the immediate area of beehive burners such as in Merritt, Savona and Barriere would improve with the installation of a wood waste/electricity generating facility in Kamloops, the local airshed would accumulate an additional 2800 kilograms of particulate per day at a 99.9999% operating burn. If the facility failed to operate at 99.9999% efficiency, even more particulate would be released to the Kamloops airshed.

A co-gen facility located in Kamloops which served the surrounding area would require the burning of about 600 million gallons of diesel fuel per year, just to get the waste to the centralized incinerator.

*References Available on Request from the Watershed Sentinel
*Sponsored by Reach for Unbleached! #708-207 West Hastings, Vancouver BC V6B 1H7; Ph/fax: (604)879-2992 info@rfu.org