U.S. Orders Paper Mills to Slash Pollution
11/14/97
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Headline: U.S. Orders Paper Mills to Slash Pollution
Source: Reuters
Date: 11/14/97
Byline: Vicki Allen
Copyright 1997 by Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In an action to slash dioxin and
other pollution from pulp and paper mills, federal regulators
Friday ordered mills to undertake a $1.8 billion effort to clean
their discharges into the air and water.
The Environmental Protection Agency said the rule will
result in a 96 percent reduction in discharges of dioxin, a
byproduct of the paper bleaching process that can cause cancer,
as well as reproductive and immune system disorders.
The rule, which will affect 155 mills across the United
States, will hasten the cleanup of 73 rivers and streams
polluted by mills, eventually eliminate the need for many fish
consumption advisories, and will cut paper-making toxic air
emissions by 60 percent, the EPA said.
But environmental advocates said the EPA's final rule was
weakened by years of industry lobbying and fell short of the
plan that the agency proposed in 1993.
``These standards will allow the pulp and paper industry to
continue their routine contamination of our waterways. We have
cost-effective technologies readily available, but you would
never know it from these standards,'' said Jessica Landman,
senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Fund.
Environmental advocates wanted the EPA to bar mills from
using chlorine in the bleaching process, which would have
eliminated dioxin releases, or at least for it to stick with its
1993 proposal that would have cost the industry $2.9 billion and
would have slashed dioxin releases by 97 percent.
But EPA assistant administrator Robert Perciasepe at a news
briefing said the original plan would have cost $1.2 billion for
just an additional 1 percent reduction in dioxin emissions.
The United Paperworkers International Union praised the
EPA's decision, saying it ``will help protect the environment
while minimizing job loss in the pulp and paper industry that
will result from the new standards.''
The EPA's final rule will allow mills to substitute chlorine
dioxide in the bleaching process for chlorine, which a number of
mills already are doing.
``It's low-lead instead of no-lead gas,'' Rick Hind, of
Greenpeace said. But he said any amount of dioxin is dangerous
as it accumulates in fatty tissue and is toxic in miniscule
amounts.
Greenpeace also said the EPA's final rule assumed that
people eat no more than 4.9 ounces per day of freshwater fish,
the food most susceptible to accumulating dioxin. But the
advocacy groups said low-income populations living downstream
from mills may eat up to 14 ounces of freshwater fish per day.
However Perciasepe said the EPA findings were based on its
analysis of diets of subsistence fishermen.
He said the rule gives mills flexibility to meet caps on air
and water discharges, and gives them incentives to agree to
stiffer requirements in return for more time to comply.
But Hind said the rule falls short of demands European
countries are putting on mills, and does not even require that
yet-to-be-built mills use available chlorine-free processes.