07/05/2008

Associated Press

Two years after coastal residents asked for it, Oregon officials say they expect to complete a rare reconsideration of a pollution permit by fall, deciding whether to tighten regulations on a pulp and paper mill near Newport.

The Department of Environmental Quality is focusing on a petition filed in October 2006 asking it to reconsider the permit that allows the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill in Toledo mill to discharge 11 million gallons of effluent daily.

For 50 years, the mill has piped its wastewater into the ocean about 3,850 feet off of Nye Beach.

In 2005 the department held public hearings on renewing the permit. Some nearby residents lobbied hard to get permit standards tightened and to strengthen monitoring of the effluent.

In July 2006, the department renewed the permit without change.

Three months later, several groups filed the petition for reconsideration and DEQ agreed.

Among the concerns: toxic metals, the possibility that effluent could contribute to the dead zones — areas so low in oxygen that marine life suffocates — and a plume of dark water around the outfall pipe sometimes visible from the air and the bluffs near Nye Beach.

"As far as anyone understands, the discharge is not causing the dead zone," said Pete Stauffer, Oregon policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for better water quality, beach access and ocean health. "The concern is that in an area where you already have low oxygen, to be discharging wastewater that is also low in oxygen can compound the stress already on the environment."

Steve Schnurbusch, water quality compliance inspector and permit writer for the Department of Environmental Quality, said the compounds released in the discharge tend to be low in toxicity and many of the chemicals used are recycled at the mill.

"People have this impression that a pulp mill is going to be discharging toxics at high levels and that is going to kill off the aquatic community," he said. "We are just not seeing that."

Franz Cosenza, technical manager at the mill, said it is efficient at using water, so there's less of it to dilute lignin, a polymer found in wood, which causes the dark plume.

Cosenza said company officials won't know what effect changes to the permit — if there are any — might have on the mill until they know what those changes might be.

"We've been looking at it to understand what the petition is all about," he said. "We are obviously in compliance with the permit as it is now."