The new Kraft mill … while it has a tendency at times for emitting unsavory odors, has a promising future in the commercial paper field. — The Camas Post, Sept. 23, 1927
Until the mill started changing and things, man, you could smell. I mean our clothes smelled like that rotten eggs which was a process that you don’t smell anymore. Sometimes you do. But over the years the mill has cleaned all that up. — Richard Kingsberry, Georgia Pacific employee, 2000 interview
In 1926, the Crown Willamette Paper Company began operating a Kraft mill at their Camas site. Despite the strong odor — compared to that of decaying cabbage — most people in the community welcomed the new technology for its economic potential. In 1933 The Camas Post proclaimed “we would … prefer the situation as it is now — plenty of jobs and plenty of odor to a situation of no odor and no jobs.” Kraft and sulfite mills are known for their smell, which comes from the output of chemicals (such as methyl mercaptans) produced during the process of transforming wood into pulp. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the mill’s Kraft and sulfite pulping process also emits harmful air pollutants, such as formaldehyde, methanol, acetaldehyde, and methyl ethyl keton.
The Kraft process produces dark brown paper, which mill employees originally made into paper bags and other unbleached products. Other products, such as tissues and napkins, were bleached with chlorine. In the last decade scientists have determined that chlorine bleaching at pulp and paper mills produces toxic chemicals known as dioxins and furans. These chemicals, along with other toxins, are in lower Columbia River sediment at levels high enough to be linked to reproductive failure in bald eagles, mink, and river otters, according to the EPA’s “Lower Columbia River Estuary Plan.” The Washington Department of Ecology reported in its 1997 annual Toxic Release Inventory that the Georgia Pacific mill in Camas was among the state’s four top toxic polluters for manufacturing facilities. A 1999 report by the state Department of Ecology found that the Camas mill was the third largest state polluter during that year, releasing 1.68 million pounds of chemicals. The report also said that the mill did not violate state or federal permits regulating releases.
Since 1980, mill ownership has spent as much as a quarter of a billion dollars upgrading the 117-year-old mill. New EPA “cluster” rules require pulp and paper mills to significantly reduce air and water emissions. The Fort James Corporation installed a steam scrubbing system at the Camas mill that strips pollutants from the pulping process and incinerates them. In addition, the scrubber reduces 80-90 per cent of the mill’s smell.
As required by EPA rules, mill owners have also been working to reduce harmful water emissions. By summer 2001 the mill management plans to eliminate the use of elemental chlorine in their bleaching process. One of the company’s three bleach lines now uses hydrogen peroxide to lighten the paper products. Another is using chlorine dioxide. The third bleach line will also use chlorine dioxide, which has a much lower potential than elemental chlorine of producing dioxins and furans.
Georgia Pacific can discharge 0.046 ounces of dioxins daily under its operating permit with the Washington State Department of Ecology. State and federal permits also allow the mill to release a number of other chemicals.
Sometimes chemicals are accidentally released from the mill. In Feb. 2001, a release into the air of methyl mercaptan, hydrogen sulfide, dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide sickened fifty-two grade-school students.
Newspaper article: “Local Kraft Pulp May Cut Imports”
1932 Newspaper article: “C.W.P. Co. to Appeal $5,000
Hinz Judgment”
EPA Fact Sheet: “EPA’s Final Pulp, Paper, and Paperboard ‘Cluster Rule'”
