EPA Sued for Ignoring Paper Mill CO2 Emissions

Mas­sive emis­sions of green­house gas­es in the form of car­bon diox­ide make bio­mass and coal burn­ing facil­i­ties major con­trib­u­tors to cli­mate change. Yet one large source of cli­mate pol­lu­tion that’s been fly­ing under the radar has been pulp and paper mills—until now.

Inter­na­tion­al Paper’s Ticon­dero­ga Mill , New York (pho­to: itsgettinghotinhere.org) 

A law­suit against the US Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) launched by the Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, Green­peace, and Port Townsend Air­Watch­ers could force new pulp and paper mills—and pos­si­bly even exist­ing facilities—to cut back on their car­bon diox­ide emis­sions or shut down. The US is the world’s largest con­sumer of paper prod­ucts, accord­ing to a Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty fact sheet. The pulp and paper indus­try is the nation’s 3rd largest con­sumer of ener­gy, after the petro­le­um and chem­i­cal indus­tries, emit­ting 57.7 MMT CO2 eq (mil­lion met­ric tons car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent) in 2004.\

The first-of-its-kind law­suit demands that the EPA abide by Sec­tion 111 of the Clean Air Act, which requires the EPA to review air pol­lu­tion stan­dards for paper mills every eight years, accord­ing to Vera Pardee, Senior Attor­ney with the Cli­mate Law Insti­tute. The last time the EPA reviewed paper mill stan­dards was in 1986—twenty six years ago. “Since then the EPA hasn’t done any­thing,” said Pardee on an Octo­ber 31, 2012 legal brief­ing via phone orga­nized by Envi­ron­men­tal Paper Net­work. “This is an unrea­son­able delay.”

The paper mills in ques­tion are called “kraft” mills, refer­ring to a chem­i­cal process employed to con­vert wood into wood pulp to make paper. The kraft pulp­ing process is “very ener­gy inten­sive, digest­ing wood chips in solu­tions in high tem­per­a­tures, recov­er­ing chem­i­cals with a heat­ing process,” said Pardee. Every time heat is used, green­house gas­es are emitted.

Aside from green­house gas­es, paper mills are a major source of tox­ic air pol­lu­tion, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to par­tic­u­late mat­ter, sul­fur diox­ide, nitro­gen oxides, and volatile organ­ic com­pounds. While refer­ring to the tox­ic air pol­lu­tants emit­ted from paper mills as “hor­rif­ic,” Pardee explained the “prime moti­va­tion” for the law­suit to be car­bon diox­ide emis­sions due to their effect on the cli­mate. “We’ve just seen Sandy’s impact,” said Pardee, “a hur­ri­cane that was ampli­fied to a sig­nif­i­cant extent by cli­mate change.”

Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty, Green­peace, and PT Air­Watch­ers intend that their law­suit will force the EPA to review the air pol­lu­tion stan­dards for paper mills. If the EPA deter­mines that the “stan­dards do not meet avail­able tech­nol­o­gy,” the agency would review the stan­dards and ulti­mate­ly issue a pro­posed new rule. If all goes accord­ing to plan, the law­suit would then be at an end. If the EPA con­tin­ues to shirk its respon­si­bil­i­ty, then “oth­er legal avenues are avail­able,” warned Pardee.

Any pro­posed rule revis­ing kraft mill stan­dards would be released by the EPA by May of 2013, opened to pub­lic com­ment, and then final­ized by March 2014. How­ev­er, Pardee doesn’t think cli­mate and for­est advo­cates need to wait until next year to make their voic­es heard. “Indus­try is cer­tain­ly talk­ing to EPA at all times, mak­ing submissions—no rea­son we shouldn’t do same thing,” advised Pardee. The pro­posed rule would man­date that EPA take a long hard look at var­i­ous oth­er air pol­lu­tants emit­ted by pulp and paper mills, besides car­bon dioxide.

The plain­tiffs “tru­ly do expect that the pro­posed rule will tight­en stan­dards and tack­le pol­lu­tants,” said Pardee. While the rules would at first apply only to new paper mills, the EPA would also be required to issue “guid­ance” for emis­sions from exist­ing mills. While guid­ance leaves indus­try more wig­gle room than stan­dards, paper mills oper­at­ing across the coun­try could be sub­ject to new restrictions.

Port Townsend Air­Watch­ers, a grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty group based in Port Townsend, Wash­ing­ton, became a plain­tiff in the EPA law­suit due to con­cerns about car­bon diox­ide and oth­er air pol­lu­tion from the Port Townsend Paper Com­pa­ny, which is also propos­ing to build a brand new bio­mass pow­er incinerator.

“The hope is that our coun­tries indus­tri­al reg­u­la­tions will con­tin­ue to move towards clean air, water, and soil that reflects cur­rent sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy focused on pro­tect­ing our earth and envi­ron­ment, now and in the future,” said Elaine Bai­ley, of Port Townsend AirWatchers.

The new air qual­i­ty stan­dards for pulp mills will only apply to bio­mass incin­er­a­tors if the incin­er­a­tor is a part of the pulp mill and legal­ly con­sid­ered a “mod­i­fi­ca­tion” of the facil­i­ty, accord­ing to Pardee. “There’s an enor­mous amount of case law and reg­u­la­to­ry mate­r­i­al that helps define that.” If the EPA sets the new stan­dards, the law would require a con­cur­rent update in guid­ance for exist­ing facil­i­ties such as the Port Townsend Paper Mill. “If the EPA doesn’t do it,” said Pardee, “there’s the next lawsuit.”

Mean­while, 3,000 miles away, some Ver­mont and New York State res­i­dents hope that the law­suit will even­tu­al­ly apply to one of the largest, local air and water pol­luters, Inter­na­tion­al Paper’s Ticon­dero­ga Paper Mill. Loom­ing on the banks of Lake Champlain—one of the largest fresh­wa­ter bod­ies in the US, a recre­ation­al par­adise, and the drink­ing water sup­ply for Burling­ton, Ver­mont, pop­u­la­tion 42,000—the Ticon­dero­ga Mill has racked up an astound­ing num­ber of air and water qual­i­ty vio­la­tions over its four decades of oper­a­tion. [see chart below].

In 2006, a con­tin­gent of Ver­mont res­i­dents and Ver­mont Pub­lic Inter­est Research Group (VPIRG) joined togeth­er to suc­cess­ful­ly oppose the paper mill’s pro­pos­al to burn tires for ener­gy fol­low­ing a test burn that sent tox­ic pol­lu­tants across the Lake into Vermont.

Aside from the tires, accord­ing to Plan­et Haz­ard, Inter­na­tion­al Paper’s Ticon­dero­ga Mill cur­rent­ly emits 2,373,928.63 pounds per year (PPY) of sul­fur diox­ide and 1,514,021 PPY of nitro­gen oxides, both threats to the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem; 730,631.80 PPY of car­bon monox­ide, which can cause heart attacks; 530,726.28 PPY of car­cino­genic Volatile Organ­ic Com­pounds; 253,703.18 PPY of asth­ma-caus­ing Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter 2.5 and 391,453.70 PPY of Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter 10; 47,672.80 PPY of ammo­nia; 2,414 TPY of chlo­ro­form; 1,468 PPY of chlo­rine; 541.98 PPY of lead; and dozens of oth­er tox­ic air pollutants.

While the EPA rul­ing that could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly impact the Ticon­dero­ga Mill is years away, today the mill is fight­ing for its life due to the increas­ing cost of fuel oil to pow­er the facil­i­ty. US Sen­a­tor Charles Schumer (D‑NY) was quot­ed in a Sep­tem­ber 2012  Press-Repub­li­can arti­cle say­ing that “the cost of ener­gy is the big alba­tross around this plant.” Schumer believes the Ticon­dero­ga Mill might close if it cheap­er ener­gy sources do not become avail­able, accord­ing to the article. 

In response to Inter­na­tion­al Paper’s pleas, Ver­mont Gas Sys­tems, sub­sidiary of Mon­tre­al-based Gaz Metro, plans to extend a pipeline under Lake Cham­plain to bring nat­ur­al gas down from Cana­da to pow­er the facil­i­ty. Thir­ty to forty-five per­cent of Ver­mont Gas’ prod­uct is obtained through the con­tro­ver­sial prac­tice of hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing, accord­ing to a lob­by­ist for the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute in Ver­mont, quot­ed in a Feb­ru­ary 2012 blog post in Sev­en Days.

Some Ver­mon­ters are point­ing out the con­tra­dic­tions between the Ver­mont State Legislature’s 2012 ban on frack­ing with­in state bor­ders, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly allow­ing the con­struc­tion of more infra­struc­ture to trans­port nat­ur­al gas fracked in Cana­da. The McNeil Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion, a 50 megawatt bio­mass pow­er incin­er­a­tor in Burling­ton that sup­plies elec­tric­i­ty for one-third of the city’s res­i­dents, burns a small per­cent­age of nat­ur­al gas from Ver­mont Gas Sys­tems along with rough­ly 400,000 tons of wood each year.

“Nat­ur­al gas is a false solu­tion to cli­mate change,” said Kei­th Brun­ner of Ris­ing Tide Ver­mont, a Burling­ton-based group that oppos­es the pipeline. “We banned frack­ing in this state for a rea­son. Ver­mont Gas’ pipeline would lock our com­mu­ni­ties into decades of depen­dence on dirty ener­gy, despite the urgent need to tran­si­tion towards gen­uine­ly renew­able, com­mu­ni­ty-owned ener­gy sources.”

The tech­nique of “direc­tion­al drilling” to lay the pipeline under Lake Cham­plain is risky, accord­ing to the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Ener­gy. “Frac-out, or inad­ver­tent return of drilling lubri­cant, is a poten­tial con­cern” when using direc­tion­al drilling “under sen­si­tive habi­tats, water­ways, and areas of con­cern for cul­tur­al resources.” The process uses a fine clay mate­r­i­al called “ben­tonite slur­ry” as drilling lubri­cant. Cer­tain “inver­te­brates, aquat­ic plants and fish and their eggs can be smoth­ered by the fine par­ti­cles if ben­tonite were dis­charged to waterways.”

If the EPA ruling—or sim­ple economics—eventually cuts back on paper mill pol­lu­tion, the ques­tion aris­es: where will Amer­i­cans get their paper? Unless the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ends its pro­hi­bi­tion on hemp pro­duc­tion (cur­rent­ly clas­si­fied as an ille­gal drug, despite its almost com­plete lack of psy­choac­tive THC) Amer­i­cans may be look­ing to our neigh­bors to the north for the answer.

In Cana­da, Green­field Paper Com­pa­ny pro­duces “Hemp Her­itage” paper, con­sist­ing of 25% hemp, 75% post-con­sumer recy­cled paper con­tent. As opposed to cut­ting forests for paper, indus­tri­al hemp doesn’t cause for­est degra­da­tion, avoids the caus­tic chem­i­cal kraft pro­cess­ing, and can be recy­cled more times than wood pulp because of its longer fibers. How­ev­er, all forms of indus­tri­al-scale agri­cul­ture, includ­ing hemp pro­duc­tion, have an envi­ron­men­tal impact.

In Novem­ber 2012, actor and envi­ron­men­tal activist Woody Har­rel­son announced his part­ner­ship with a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny to build a paper mill using only agri­cul­tur­al waste.

Joshua Mar­tin, of Envi­ron­men­tal Paper Net­work, said “small­er, clean­er, spe­cial­ized mills might be a pre­ferred future for paper needs. Grad­u­al­ly we can build these clos­er to sources of oth­er fiber instead of in the forest.” 

Iron­i­cal­ly, one of the indus­tries that would ben­e­fit most from the demise of the pulp and paper indus­try would be the bio­mass indus­try. With less com­pe­ti­tion for a lim­it­ed sup­ply of forests, bio­mass devel­op­ers could more ful­ly com­man­deer the avail­able stream of wood and build even more—and larger—biomass incinerators.