Domtar updates on environmental work
Company has spent millions improving Espanola mill

By ROSS RAGUTH

On Tuesday October 27 the Friends of the Spanish River hosted a symposium designed to update interested parties on the good work being done to rehabilitate that critical water body.

The morning session included presentations from Vale Inco and Domtar Inc., the two major industrial players impacting the Spanish River and Harbour, which remain on the government's “area of concern” list because of lingering environmental contamination and concerns over wildlife.

Sharon Semeniuk works in the environmental wing of Eddy Specialty Papers in Espanola. She made a presentation outlining the mill's history, its 100-plus-year impact on the river and the efforts in recent decades to shrink its environmental footprint.

“The original groundwood mill was built in 1905 by the Spanish River Pulp and Paper Company,” she said.

“It was then purchased by George Weston Ltd, owners of E.B. Eddy, from the Brown Co. of New York in 1969. It soon became part of Domtar Inc. in 1998. The hardwood line was extensively modernized in 1999.”

Now in 2009, the mill has 2 complete pulping a bleaching lines. It produces 1000/ADMT (air dried metric tonne) per day of pulp production. The mill also has 2 specialty/packaging paper machines. With the bleaching lines, all the nutrients are chemically removed to make the paper.

When it first comes out, it looks like common brown paper bag paper. After its bleaching session, it comes out like normal white paper. These processes involve all 3 phases: solid, liquid and gas.

During the processing the mill uses 25 megawatts to burn lignin, which is a complex chemical compound most commonly derived from wood, and an integral part of the secondary cell walls of plants and some algae.

Back before the current advances in the mill's disposal facets, the bleached waste would be dumped into the Spanish River. But in 1977-80 Oxygen Delignification on the soft wood, then hard wood pulp lines, allowed the dump of waste to be more eco friendly.

In 1981-83 $215 million dollars went into the modernization/expansion of the Kraft Mill. An Effluent treatment system was put into place and 52 acres were designed for aerated stabilization basins.

The waste water treated travels 1.8 kilometers to the basins. These basins use bacteria to keep the treatment station going. However, to keep the bacteria going, oxygen must be constantly supplied to them.

Bacteria or “bugs” use the oxygen provided to eat the waste. Even without the treatment stations, this would occur naturally in the river. However, when done in this fashion, the effluent eats less oxygen when dumped into the river.

Much work has been done to reduce the BOD (biological oxygen demand) of effluent going into the river. Now the BOD is much less, not even noticeably affecting the river according to Semeniuk, and leaving oxygen in the water for the creatures that rely on it.

In 1995 they did away with their chlorine bleaching methods. From 1997 to 1999, $80 million was put into a hardwood modernization program that replaced everything, including original chemical use. In 1998, an oxygen diffuser was installed on the bottom of the Spanish river at Webbwood as a back up just incase the oxygen were to die out suddenly.

Not long after in 1999 $30 million was put into a state-of-the-art wood chipper installation, and in 2000 a secondary containment program was made. As an extra precaution, they added a wall for the employee's safety, but also to keep other things from falling into the water.

Later in 2004 the companies Bioxin and Furans were “non-detect,” or so low the equipment being used wasn't sensitive enough to register a reading.

Furan is a heterocyclic organic compound that is typically derived by the thermal decomposition of pentose -containing materials, cellulosic solids especially pine-wood.