March 28, 2024
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State’s paper mills pass DEP dioxin tests

AUGUSTA – Maine’s paper mills no longer are releasing harmful levels of dioxin into the state’s rivers, the Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday. But some environmentalists say that despite the optimistic announcement, some companies still are producing dioxin pollution.

It has been eight years since legislators passed a law requiring that mills demonstrate their cleanliness by testing fish flesh upstream and downstream of each of the state’s six kraft pulp mills for the presence of dioxins. Dioxins are a family of toxic substances, created as a byproduct of paper production, which can build up in the body fat of fish, wildlife and people, when released into the environment.

This week, state environmental officials released a report indicating that all but one of the state’s mills passed tests in which bass, suckers and mussels were examined for dioxin levels over a two-year period. Now that the mills have met the DEP standard, the testing likely will end, according to an industry spokesman.

The effluents, or industrial wastewater, released by Maine mills have long met federal pollution levels in laboratory tests, which can measure dioxin concentrations at 10 parts per quadrillion – a figure that is 1 billion times 1 million, according to DEP.

But fish consumption advisories have remained in place on five Maine rivers – the Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, Sebasticook and Salmon River Falls – because dioxin levels over time have built up to high enough levels to pose a risk to human health.

These levels prompted state legislators eight years ago to require zero dioxin release from the mills.

Meeting the zero-dioxin challenge proved difficult, however, and the DEP spent five years debating more than 70 different potential scientific criteria for the tests. After changing course several times, the state decided on testing three species – smallmouth bass, suckers and mussels – then certifying mills “dioxin-free” if they showed no difference between upstream and downstream pollutant levels in two of the three species.

After being tested in 2003 and 2004, MeadWestvaco in Rumford, International Paper Co. in Jay, SAPPI-Somerset in Skowhegan and Georgia-Pacific Corp. in Old Town all were found by DEP to be in compliance. And Lincoln Paper and Tissue, the sole mill that did not pass the test for 2004, failed not because of pollution levels, but because the mill shut down during 2004 and an insufficient number of fish was tested, said Andy Fisk of DEP’s Bureau of Land and Water Quality. The company did pass for 2003, Fisk added.

Domtar Industries Inc. in Woodland was released from the testing program early because dioxin was not believed to be a problem. And neither the Fraser Papers Inc. mill in Madawaska nor the Katahdin Paper Co. mills in the Millinocket region use the papermaking process that results in dioxin.

For Mike Barden, director of environmental affairs for the Maine Pulp and Paper Association, Tuesday’s news was a vindication of what he had been saying all along – that industry best practices ensure clean rivers. The testing cost the industry an estimated $3 million – an expense that competitors elsewhere didn’t have to contend with, said Barden on Tuesday, adding that he will be glad to see the testing end.

However, this week’s announcement drew skepticism from Nick Bennett, staff scientist for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Originally, DEP had required that dioxins not be present in any of the species tested. The 2-out-of-3 approach is misleading, he said, adding that the mills in Old Town and Skowhegan would have failed if all three species had been considered.

“The idea that everyone is off the hook … is completely dependent on them changing the test,” Bennett said Tuesday.

“The 1987 law was supposed to make fish safe to eat from the impact of dioxin. Eight years later, DEP still has no strategy for making this happen,” Bennett wrote in recent comments to the department.

State officials said Thursday that fish consumption advisories will not be lifted anytime soon – in part because of dioxin pollution that enters Maine from mills outside state borders, and in part because of other pollutants that the Maine Bureau of Health considers in setting advisories.

“Even as we start driving down the dioxin concentrations, we’re left with mercury,” Fisk said.

Maine has done all it can to reduce pollution from mercury and dioxin, he said. Now it’s up to the federal government to regulate the mercury that rides the prevailing winds from coal-fired power plants to Maine, Fisk said.

“We have to be able to say to the federal government, ‘We’d like to see you doing what we’re doing here in Maine,'” Gov. John Baldacci said after the DEP announcement Tuesday.


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