A few days before the scheduled Sept. 6 public hearing in Waynesville on the permitted discharge of Blue Ridge Paper Products to the Pigeon River, environmental groups — which only three months ago had worked with the company on a joint study on bleaching improvements for the mill — say they are opposing the Division of Water Quality’s (DWQ) “low expectation” permit provisions for discharged color.

“Again and again, we’ve been told that this time was going to be different,” says Bobby Seay of the Dead Pigeon River Council, who has fought the paper mill’s discharge for over two decades. “But North Carolina has never voluntarily reduced the discharge. This tiny amount of reduction isn’t even worth talking about. It’s long past time for the mill to meet N.C. water quality standards.”

Seay and other downstream activists have been part of a coalition of environmental groups that co-contracted this spring with Blue Ridge Paper for a study of water quality benefits from oxygen based pulping and bleaching.

“We really wanted this study to be the beginning of getting cooperatively through this permit cycle,” says Scot Quaranda of the Asheville-based Dogwood Alliance. “Blue Ridge was saying all the right things about environmental stewardship. They said they wanted to meet N.C. water quality standards by the end of the coming permit, so we were very hopeful. We want to work together on creative solutions for forest stewardship and air quality problems as part of a continuing effort with the new employee-owners. DWQ has badly undercut the communication with this draft permit.”

The draft permit appears to call for a minimum of 19 to 29 percent reduction in effluent color to the Pigeon River. Because the mill is already below current permit limits, the net reduction could be even less than this, environmentalists say. Even the apparent 9,000 pounds per day reduction is far short of what is needed to remove the long-standing variance to the state color standard.

North Carolina has a narrative in-stream color standard calling for “no objectionable color” to be discharged into state waters, but EPA’s interpretation of that standard has been 50 color units, not very strict, according to Scott Jackson, Research Director for Clean Water Fund of North Carolina.

“Compare that to other states’ standards. Montana says no more than a 5-color unit change from upstream, measured 6 miles downstream from the effluent pipe,” he said. “Maine says no individual discharger can increase color by more than 20 units at the discharge. It is do-able; every mill in Maine has met their standard.”

Blue Ridge’s discharged color currently is regulated at 37 units above background over 20 miles below the mill. “

Perhaps most important in setting limits for this permit is the commitment made in a 1997 Settlement Agreement by all parties to continue reducing color “at the quickest possible pace,” and the long history of downstream distrust perpetuated by still visible color even 40 or more miles downstream in Tennessee.

“If it hadn’t been for the 1997 Settlement Agreement”, says David Jenkins, Conservation Director for the American Canoe Association, “the Pigeon River would be fully twice as dark as it is right now. ... This new DWQ drafted permit represents a dramatic departure from that proven approach and ignores a real chance to end the variance by the end of this permit term."

EPA was forced to take over the Champion permit in 1987 and called at that time for reducing color in the Pigeon River to 50 color units just below “the pipe” within five years. Despite major technological improvements to the Canton mill it is still not meeting that standard 14 years later.

“What DWQ has done is tragic,” says Hope Taylor-Guevara of Clean Water Fund. “This permit hearing should have been a celebration of a new era of high expectations and collaboration.”

 

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