PrintApr. 2--State water quality officials have released a draft permit for the Samoa pulp mill which would force a significant change in how it treats millions of gallons of wastewater it releases into the ocean.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board would enforce federal guidelines laid out for other similar pulp mills in the United States, scrapping unique provisions that applied to the mill under a 1990s-era agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The currently closed mill, now owned by Freshwater Tissue Co., would have to build a secondary water treatment facility that would strip out pollutants that had previously been piped into the ocean.
The draft permit also calls for the development of a cease and desist order that would specify how wastewater releases are to be tightened over time and as the mill builds the water treatment facility. That order will also clarify how the permit will be enforced by the water board, said board Assistant Executive Officer Luis Rivera.
Rivera said that the facility will now have limits placed on effluent generated when producing both bleached pulp and unbleached pulp, a change from previous requirements that were applied only to its chlorine-free bleached pulp.
Freshwater Tissue bought the mill in February 2009 from Evergreen Pulp. Evergreen shut down the mill in October 2008, pushing some 200 people out of their jobs. Evergreen and several previous owners have had a history of water quality violations under the previously issued permit, and, after the mill shut, the North Coast water board chose to revoke the permit.
When Freshwater Tissue's initial plans to rebuild the plant as a pulp-and-tissue paper facility didn't pan out due to lack of funding, it considered liquidating the mill. But Freshwater officials changed their minds and began laying plans to restart the mill to produce unbleached and bleached pulp, and began searching for funding. The company estimates that much of the $50 million it hopes to raise would be spent on water quality and air emissions improvement measures; it estimates the secondary water treatment facility would cost about $26 million.
Freshwater President Bob Simpson said that the company is reviewing the draft permit, and does not have any response currently. He added that he's confident, after months of discussion with water board staff, that there will be no surprises.
Simpson said he anticipates the mill could be restarted within six months of being granted the permit. The board is set to consider adopting the permit on June 10.
The draft permit would deal with two effluent issues that the mill has had trouble with for years. One is total suspended solids -- whatever solid material is present in the wastewater -- and biological oxygen demand, a measure of how much oxygen is stripped from the water around the outfall pipe that runs 11/4-mile into the ocean. The mill released about 14 million gallons of effluent a day in the last three years of the mill's operation.
The required wastewater treatment plant would reduce the degree of biological oxygen demand through a system that would include two new pump stations, cooling towers, a sludge reactor and other equipment.
Just how much sludge would be produced by the facility, expected to produce up to 700 tons of pulp per day, isn't known yet, Rivera said.
The sludge would have to be trucked to a certified landfill. An environmental impact document will be produced that will consider the matter once the exact specifications of the plants are known, he said.
Should pulp production rates change significantly during the life of the permit, the water board may reopen the permit and modify effluent limits for BOD and total suspended solids, according to the text of the draft permit.
Comments on the draft permit must be submitted to the water board by May 1. The draft permit can be found at www.swrcb.ca.gov /northcoast/board_decisions /tentative_orders/.
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