Environmentalists Bask in Pulp Mill Victory
12/18/97
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Headline: Environmentalists Bask in Pulp Mill Victory
Source: Beacon Journal Online
Date: 12/18/97
Copyright 1997: The Beacon Journal Publishing Co.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Environmentalists
who helped defeat a proposed pulp mill in
Mason County fired a warning shot at other
developers with similar plans.
Projects that ``detrimentally affect the
health and safety of our people and the
environment'' will encounter opposition,
said Jason Huber, a Charleston attorney for
the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
``The people are prepared to oppose those
types of projects,'' he said.
A New York company formally abandoned plans
Wednesday for a $1.1 billion pulp mill on
the Ohio River.
Opponents said Parsons & Whittemore Inc.'s
plans to use a chlorine dioxide bleaching
process would have increased the levels of
dioxin in the Ohio River and in the air.
Dioxin, a byproduct of the bleaching
process, is known to cause cancer, and
recent studies also have implicated the
toxin in human reproductive and immune
system problems. Regulating dioxin is a
problem because it is believed to cause such
problems even when it occurs in amounts too
tiny to measure.
The coalition also was concerned about mass
removal of trees from land that has
recovered from similar deforestation about
80 years ago, Huber said.
``If there are going to be corporations that
use our forests as a resource, we expect
them to use it in a manner that will
contribute long-term positive affects,''
Huber said. ``Other companies should be on
notice that the coalition exists.''
Matt Peters, a spokesman for the Buckeye
Forest Council of Ohio, said the mill would
have consumed more than 2,000 acres of trees
each month in a 75-mile radius of Apple
Grove. That radius includes Wayne National
Forest, most of Ohio's 19 state forests and
much private woodland, he said.
``The potential for this mill to devastate
our forests was very real. That is
absolutely the wrong way to use our already
degraded forests, especially when viable
alternatives for making paper exist,'' he
said.
Parsons & Whittemore probably won't be the
last company to target West Virginia as a
plant site, Huber said. Because the state's
forests are mature, ``We'll see more of this
type of project,'' he predicted.
The coalition also had opposed the company's
plans to use non-union labor and to hire
fewer workers than originally promised.
The Rye Brook, N.Y., company blamed the
state for bringing the approval process to a
crawl.
``The window of opportunity' to develop the
project at Apple Grove has definitely
passed. In our industry, timing to develop
and finance a project is most critical,''
President Arthur L. Schwartz wrote to John
Caffrey, director of the Division of
Environmental Protection.
``Had the state acted responsibly in a
reasonable time frame to permit the project
-- whatever the requirements -- it is
possible, even likely, that the project
could have proceeded. That is no longer the
case,'' Schwartz said.