PORT ANGELES — McKinley Paper Co. wants to reduce the monitoring frequency for treated wastewater that pours from two outfalls into the Strait of Juan de Fuca until late next year — after the company expects to restart the Ediz Hook plant.
The public comment period on McKinley’s proposed revision to its state Department of Ecology permit began Wednesday and ends Oct. 9, according to a public notice Wednesday in the Peninsula Daily News.
The factory, which Mexican-owned McKinley purchased March 31 from Nippon Paper Industries U.S.A. for $20.6 million, is no longer manufacturing paper for telephone books and newspapers.
The biomass cogeneration plant is offline, too.
When the mill starts up by December 2018, as planned, McKinley will produce containerboard made from recycled cardboard.
“The monitoring in the current [National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System] permit no longer reflects current mill conditions,” according to the public notice.
According to the proposed permit modification (http://tinyurl.com/PDN-McKinleyPermit), the wastewater treatment plant processes rainwater from the plant property and water discharged from cooling operations in the mill.
“The water we are discharging primarily is stormwater and cooling water, so it’s very clean,” McKinley’s Environmental Manager Paul Perlwitz said Friday.
“We’ve got six months since the date of the shutdown, and we are getting very similar results every day.”
According to the proposed permit modification, McKinley wants to reduce, from three times a week to once a week, the monitoring frequency for reviewing biochemical oxygen demand, which measures organic pollution, and the monitoring frequency for measuring total suspended solids.
Additional chemical analysis and chronic-acute fish bioassays also would not occur until within 60 days of the plant resuming pulp and paper operations.
The bioassays are periodic tests that measure the wastewater’s toxicity on fish, Perlwitz said.
Perlwitz said air-pollution emissions from the new plant likely will be “very similar” to Nippon’s after McKinley changes mill operations.
“McKinley doesn’t know what those modifications are,” Perlwitz said.
The Olympic Region Clean Air Agency issues air quality permits for Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“We have to approach ORCAA [the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency] to talk to them about it,” Perlwitz said.
“Modifications must be reviewed to see if they trigger permitting requirements.”
Perlwitz was Nippon’s environmental manager.
McKinley spokeswoman Cathy Price is Nippon’s former human resources manager and fills the same role for McKinley.
She said Friday that McKinley remains on track to retool the factory to process recycled corrugated cardboard into manufactured containerboard by December 2018.
She said McKinley has yet to select vendors to supply new equipment.
“We have a general idea of what equipment is going in,” Price said.
“Nothing is cast in stone yet.”
McKinley knows what’s needed, but market forces are holding things up, Price said.
“The cost of OCC [old corrugated cardboard] is very high,” she said.
“I believe we are waiting for that to come down some to begin startup plans.”
City Manager Dan McKeen said Friday the mill’s shutdown will cost the city of Port Angeles $315,000 in utility taxes in 2017 and $440,000 in 2018 — losses McKeen said will be covered by budget savings.
He has met with Herb Baez, McKinley’s vice president of operations, and been told the company expects to restart the mill by December 2018.
McKeen said he needs to know by mid-2018 if that’s going to happen so as to plan the 2019 budget.
McKeen will meet periodically with company officials for updates as next summer approaches.
“I would anticipate, based on the information we’ve been provided, that they should know by midyear next year, 2018, that they would have a pretty good idea of a start-up date,” he said.
The plant had employed more than 150 workers before ceasing production in the first quarter of 2017.
Price said about 25 workers now staff the plant daily.
They preserve and maintain equipment including front-end loaders and the clarifier, provide security and perform administrative duties such as accounting, purchasing and human resources management.
Price said those functions “don’t go away” even though no paper is being produced and the plant’s biomass electric cogeneration plant is silent.
“We have a much reduced staff and in fact in a lot of cases have one-person departments which in many cases is the management of that department,” Price said.
She said the company continues to wait for word on federal Trade Act assistance that was applied for earlier this year that could go to the most recently laid off employees.
“A lot of them are going to school or retraining under the old Trade Act agreement,” she said.
“They stop in from time to time.”
McKinley operates its other U.S. plant in Pruitt, N.M., where Price travels monthly to monitor the human resources department.
A maintenance and engineering manager from McKinley’s Pruitt, N.M., plant has been stationed in Port Angeles for a few months.
“Once we start up, we will likely have some trainers coming up this way because this production has not been done before,” Price said.
“That’s still out ahead of us.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
