Sludge, other hazardous materials await cleanup
9/12/14
Once an imminent threat to Humboldt Bay, the 2.7 million gallons of caustic liquors and chemicals at the run-down Samoa pulp mill have been completely removed from the site after a nearly six-month effort.
Environmental Protection Agency federal on-scene coordinator Chris Weden said that the hundreds of trucks that transported the liquors — chemicals used to break down wood chips into pulp material for paper products — had no incidents even as the last shipments left the mill this week.
“There were no spills along the route, and all the liquor was recyclable,” he said. “There was no waste of material.”
The cleanup at the 72-acre pulp mill site — owned by the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District since August — began on March 28 with members of the EPA, U.S. Coast Guard and local entities contributing. The hazardous state of the mill was brought to the EPA’s attention last August by the Wiyot Tribe.
EPA officials inspected the site a year ago this month and initiated an emergency response after discovering that the containers and tanks holding the liquors were corroding and at the brink of overflowing into nearby Humboldt Bay.
Next steps
Though the liquors and 10,000 gallons of sulfuric acid have all been taken to Longview, Washington, to be reused by another pulp mill, the cleanup effort at the Samoa site is not over yet.
“There is a considerable amount of sludge in a lot of the tanks,” Weden said. “There are tanks that have 6 to 8 feet of sludge on the bottom, where the only way to feasibly remove that is to remove the tank — and we do that with boom trucks and cutting torches — and are able to recycle that material when they’re steel tanks and get a little money to pay for the cleanup.”
The sludge results from the pulping process, Weden said. So far, five steel tanks and six poly tanks have been decontaminated and disassembled with the full process likely to be over by March. Weden said the process will take another six months because there will be fewer workers on site, fewer trucks, holiday leave for some of the workers, and that the sludge must be solidified before it can be transferred.
Once the site is determined to be free of hazardous chemicals, the EPA’s hand in the project will be over, Weden said.
“As the hazards diminish, the needs for us to do that work also diminishes,” he said. “Our deep pocket isn’t all that deep, and there are plenty of other waste sites that need to be addressed.”
Payback
With the EPA’s assistance comes a $3 million price tag, which may increase. While a previous owner of the pulp mill, Evergreen Pulp Inc., has been deemed responsible for leaving the site in its decrepit state, the harbor district now has to bear the cost as the current owner.
District Chief Executive Officer Jack Crider said they had been negotiating with the EPA about a settlement agreement in the past, but are now working on a MUNIPAY assessment that ”evaluates a municipality’s or regional utility’s ability to afford compliance costs, cleanup costs or civil penalties,” according to the EPA.
“It’s a kind of a model that pulls in demographics information and the district’s ability to repay the EPA,” Crider said. “If the numbers come out right, you don’t have to repay them. We said, ‘Time out. We just want to go through MUNIPAY.’ So they agreed.”
Efforts by the EPA to contact Evergreen Pulp, Inc., for reimbursement over the last six months had been unsuccessful, but EPA attorney advisor Andrew Helmlinger said that has changed.
“We have found some contacts for them in Colorado,” he said, adding that he could not discuss the issue in more detail.
In the meantime, the harbor commission voted to sign an agreement in April with Coast Seafoods, Inc., for a $1.25 million limited obligation note.
If the harbor district fails to pay back the loan in a timely manner, revenues from Coast Seafood’s nearly 300-acre tidelands lease with the district will be used to repay it. As part of the agreement, the district also agreed to extend the company’s tidelands lease by 40 years, starting one year from this month, which will remain in effect until the loan is repaid in full, according to a May 27 addendum. Once repaid, the lease will reduce to five years with the company retaining the option to renew it another five years.
Future developments
Crider said he is optimistic about the harbor district’s efforts by to turn the pulp mill’s abandoned machine shops and warehouses into a functioning business hub.
Recently, representatives from Mitsubishi inspected an area that may be the home of a pellet factory by the company Energistics.
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Crider said. “We’ve also got Taylor Shellfish in there now, and they’re expanding. The most serious one is Coast Seafood. They are going through a major expansion.”
The harbor district has also paid for a two-year option to purchase the nearly 80 acres of pulp mill still owned by previous mill owner Freshwater Tissue Company. Crider said the district received $12 million in new market tax credits, which can be used to improve the facilities at the site.
“It would enable us to put $3.8 million worth of improvements to the buildings on parcel A, and if we take full advantage of the entire $12 million then we should be able to generate enough capital to purchase the other two parcels, but we have to borrow money,” he said. “That’s the challenge.”
As to how the rest of the debris at the mill will be dealt with after the EPA leaves, Crider said that is something they will be working out in the future.
“With the liquors being gone, the catastrophic event that could have happened is at least gone and behind us and that’s, at least, a good feeling,” he said.
