G-P pursuing permits for $47 million recycling plant

EAST MILLINOCKET — The Northern Paper Division of Georgia Pacific Corp. is seeking several amendments to environmental permits for the construction of a $47 million recycling/de-inking plant at the East Millinocket mill.

Gordan Manuel, G-P’s manager of public affairs, said the company was trying to get permits in hand before seeking capital funding for the project.

“It is a priority issue for us,” he said. The start-up of the new de-inking plant is targeted for late 1992. G-P is carrying out the project started by Great Northern Paper Co.

Manuel described it as a “customer-driven project. Our customers in New England and the middle Atlantic states are all under a lot of pressure from state legislative mandates. What we are seeing is a future trend to provide some form of recycled fiber in their papers, and we as a supplier are trying to meet that demand.”

Dale Phenicie, G-P’s manager of environmental affairs, said the recycling/de-inking plant would provide the company with the capability to receive waste papers, such as old newspapers and some magazines, de-ink them, and turn them into paper containing recycled fibers.

“The whole objective is to allow our final product to contain recycled fiber. Old paper will be used in making new paper,” he said.

He said the plan was to build a 250-ton-per-day de-inking facility that later could be expanded to 500 tons per day. He said the plant ultimately would give the company the capability to have all of its newsprint production contain 40 percent recycled fiber.

Phenicie described the proposed plant as “state of the art,” with the latest technology to make high-quality paper containing recycled fiber.

“The printing community realizes that perhaps there will be some change in final paper properties. We expect to be able to make quality sheet (paper) and expect to be able to make as high a quality recycled fiber sheet as anybody,” he said.

The company needs amendments to several existing environmental permits. An amendment to its site-location permit for the East Millinocket mill would allow the plant to be built. Because the company plans to burn some of the sludges produced by the process, Phenicie said it needed an amendment to its air-emissions license for the boilers.

Sludge that cannot be burned would be disposed of in the company’s Dolby landfill. He said about 20 percent of the waste paper brought into East Millinocket for recycling and de-inking would be rejected and would need to be disposed of by either burning it in the boiler or in the landfill. He said things such as staples and binding materials would be disposed of in the landfill.

He said the company had obtained an amendment for its waste-water discharge permit for the East Millinocket mill, but it was being challenged by the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Phenicie estimated the company would need about 100,000 tons of waste paper a year to supply the 250-ton-per-day plant. He said the waste paper would come from several sources.

“We would like to take as much from Maine as we can because transportation costs would be lower. However, Maine does not supply enough waste paper to keep a plant like this running so we will be bringing in waste paper from out of state.”

He said the company probably would enter into agreements with its customers to take back waste paper.

He said, “I expect we will see a lot of arrangements. We are looking to see what the supply arrangements will be. Ultimately, there will be a home for waste paper, which is the important thing. How it gets there is the part that we will have to work out.”