Catawba paper mill

Last updated
Catawba paper mill
USA South Carolina relief location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within South Carolina
Catawba paper mill
Built1959 (1959)
Location Catawba, York County, South Carolina
Coordinates 34°50′N80°53′W / 34.84°N 80.89°W / 34.84; -80.89
Industry Pulp and paper
ProductsPulp
Employees450
Buildings94,000 square feet
Address5300 Cureton Ferry Rd, Catawba, SC 29704
Owner(s)Schwarz Partners and New Indy LLC (a subsidiary of Kraft Group)
Website newindycatawba.com

Catawba paper mill is a paper factory in Catawba, South Carolina part owned by a subsidiary of Kraft Group.

Contents

The mill's owners were fined $1.1 million by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to odours emitted from the plant.

Description

Catawba paper mill is a paper factory located on a 1,800 acre site [1] in Catawba, [2] York County, South Carolina [3] located approximately 5,000 feet [2] from the Catawba River [4] upstream of Chester, South Carolina. [4]

It is owned by Kraft Group subsidiary [5] New Indy LLC, [3] sometimes known as New Indy Containerboard. [4]

Wastewater from the mill flows through the mill's Aeration Stabilization Basin and an Equalization Basin, both designed to reduce the emission of hydrogen sulfide from the mill. [6]

The site 94,000 square foot factory employs 450 people. [1]

History

The mill was built in 1959. [7] Prior to New Indy buying the mill, it was owned by Bowater. [3] Schwarz Partners [1] and New Indy purchased the site from (Bowater's successor) Resolute Forest Products in 2019 [8] and switched activities away from bleached paper towards unbleached pulp. [3]

In 2020, the mill's owners were the subject of litigation by residents suing for damages they linked to odors from the plant. [2] Local residents claimed that the mill's emission caused headaches, nose bleeds, and nausea. [9] By 2021, over 30,000 public complaints had been made about the smells from the mill. [8]

The Environmental Protection Agency fined the owners $1.1 million relating to emissions of fumes from the plant. [2] In 2022, mill manager Tony Hobson admitted that "We let the community down from an overall standpoint ...We started up. We ran into some issues at start-up and that ended up cascading into more than what we had hoped for." [6] In 2022, dioxins were identified in four 1960s-built [3] waste sludge lagoons at the mill. [2] An engineering report by S&ME Inc states that leaks from the lagoons seep into the adjacent river's embankment and that a repair was necessary. [3] Owners acknowledge the presence of dioxins in the lagoons, noting that this is a legacy of activities of prior owners. [3]

The mill is featured in the 2015 book The Slain Wood: Papermaking and Its Environmental Consequences in the American South written by UCLA law professor William Boyd [3] In the book, Boyd advocates for the mechanical removal of the sludge from the lagoons. [3] and encouraged the site's current owners to solve the problems they inherited with their purchase of the mill. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte, North Carolina</span> Most populous city in North Carolina, United States

Charlotte is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 15th-most populous city in the United States, the seventh-most populous city in the South, and the second-most populous city in the Southeast behind Jacksonville, Florida. Charlotte is the cultural, economic, and transportation center of the Charlotte metropolitan area, whose estimated 2023 population of 2,805,115 ranked 22nd in the United States. The Charlotte metropolitan area is part of an 18-county market region and combined statistical area with an estimated population of 3,387,115 as of 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Paper</span> American pulp and paper company

The International Paper Company is an American pulp and paper company, the largest such company in the world. It has approximately 39,000 employees, and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Weyerhaeuser Company is an American timberland company which owns nearly 12,400,000 acres of timberlands in the U.S., and manages an additional 14,000,000 acres of timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. The company has manufactured wood products for over a century. It operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domtar</span> Largest integrated producer of uncoated free-sheet paper in North America

Domtar Corporation is a North American pulp and paper company that manufactures and markets wood fiber-based pulp and paper products. The company operates pulp mills and paper mills in Windsor, Quebec; Dryden, Ontario; Kamloops, British Columbia; Ashdown, Arkansas; Hawesville, Kentucky; Plymouth, North Carolina; Marlboro County, South Carolina; and Kingsport, Tennessee. While Domtar operated independently for several decades and was listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges, the company was acquired by Paper Excellence Group in November 2021 and has since operated as a subsidiary.

Norske Skog ASA, formerly Norske Skogindustrier ASA, which translates as Norwegian Forest Industries, is a Norwegian pulp and paper company established in 1962. The company has long been one of the world's leading manufacturers of newsprint and magazine paper. Due to a declining market for publication paper, the company has increasingly focused on other uses of timber and recycled paper, such as packaging. The company is headquartered in Norway and has factories in five countries and an annual production of approximately 2 million tonnes of paper (2020).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biosolids</span> Decontaminated sewage sludge

Biosolids are solid organic matter recovered from a sewage treatment process and used as fertilizer. In the past, it was common for farmers to use animal manure to improve their soil fertility. In the 1920s, the farming community began also to use sewage sludge from local wastewater treatment plants. Scientific research over many years has confirmed that these biosolids contain similar nutrients to those in animal manures. Biosolids that are used as fertilizer in farming are usually treated to help to prevent disease-causing pathogens from spreading to the public. Some sewage sludge can not qualify as biosolids due to persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals, radionuclides, and heavy metals at levels sufficient to contaminate soil and water when applied to land.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kraft process</span> Process of converting wood into wood pulp

The kraft process (also known as kraft pulping or sulfate process) is a process for conversion of wood into wood pulp, which consists of almost pure cellulose fibres, the main component of paper. The kraft process involves treatment of wood chips with a hot mixture of water, sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and sodium sulfide (Na2S), known as white liquor, that breaks the bonds that link lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose. The technology entails several steps, both mechanical and chemical. It is the dominant method for producing paper. In some situations, the process has been controversial because kraft plants can release odorous products and in some situations produce substantial liquid wastes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duke Energy</span> American electrical power and natural gas company

Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company ranked as the 141st largest company in the United States in 2024 – its highest-ever placement on the Fortune 500 list.

An anaerobic lagoon or manure lagoon is a man-made outdoor earthen basin filled with animal waste that undergoes anaerobic respiration as part of a system designed to manage and treat refuse created by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Anaerobic lagoons are created from a manure slurry, which is washed out from underneath the animal pens and then piped into the lagoon. Sometimes the slurry is placed in an intermediate holding tank under or next to the barns before it is deposited in a lagoon. Once in the lagoon, the manure settles into two layers: a solid or sludge layer and a liquid layer. The manure then undergoes the process of anaerobic respiration, whereby the volatile organic compounds are converted into carbon dioxide and methane. Anaerobic lagoons are usually used to pretreat high strength industrial wastewaters and municipal wastewaters. This allows for preliminary sedimentation of suspended solids as a pretreatment process.

Dalhousie is a community in Heron Bay in Restigouche County, New Brunswick. It was a town from 1905 to 2023, when it was amalgamated with Charlo to form the town of Heron Bay. Heron Bay is the northernmost municipality in New Brunswick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hartford, Tennessee</span> Unincorporated community in Tennessee, United States

Hartford is an unincorporated community in Cocke County, Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. Although it is not a census-designated place, the ZIP Code Tabulation Area for the ZIP Code (37753) that serves Hartford had a population of 814, according to the 2000 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kraft Group</span> American group of large corporations

The Kraft Group, LLC, is a group of privately held companies in the professional sports, manufacturing, and real estate development industries doing business in 90 countries. Founded in 1998 by American businessman Robert Kraft as a holding company for various interests he had acquired since 1968, it is based in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Bleaching of wood pulp is the chemical processing of wood pulp to lighten its color and whiten the pulp. The primary product of wood pulp is paper, for which whiteness is an important characteristic. These processes and chemistry are also applicable to the bleaching of non-wood pulps, such as those made from bamboo or kenaf.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tire-derived fuel</span>

Tire-derived fuel (TDF) is composed of shredded scrap tires. Tires may be mixed with coal or other fuels, such as wood or chemical wastes, to be burned in concrete kilns, power plants, or paper mills. An EPA test program concluded that, with the exception of zinc emissions, potential emissions from TDF are not expected to be very much different from other conventional fossil fuels, as long as combustion occurs in a well-designed, well-operated and well-maintained combustion device.

The Tasman Mill site is a pulp and paper mill located on Fletcher Avenue just outside the town of Kawerau in New Zealand. The Tasman Mill site is the largest single employer in the Eastern Bay of Plenty region. Three pulp or paper companies previously operated in Kawerau: Norske Skog operated the mechanical pulp mill and newsprint paper mill; Oji Fibre Solutions, formerly Carter Holt Harvey, operated the kraft pulp mill; and SCA who manufacture tissue and base paper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Lakes Paper</span>

The Great Lakes Paper Company was the operator of the largest and most modern pulp and paper manufacturing facility in the world. The Company employed over 4,000 in Northern Ontario, starting in 1924 as a pulp mill at Fort William, Ontario. Great Lakes had a highly developed social network within the company, including a children's Christmas party held at a local arena, and an annual picnic held at a local park, as well as many sports teams and other social groups. The company's working environment was enhanced by cultural diversity. For example under the Government of Canada's immigration policy, the "Close Relatives Scheme" resulted in over 400 Ukrainian refugees being employed as workers after World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental impact of paper</span>

The environmental impact of paper are significant, which has led to changes in industry and behaviour at both business and personal levels. With the use of modern technology such as the printing press and the highly mechanized harvesting of wood, disposable paper became a relatively cheap commodity, which led to a high level of consumption and waste. The rise in global environmental issues such as air and water pollution, climate change, overflowing landfills and clearcutting have all lead to increased government regulations. There is now a trend towards sustainability in the pulp and paper industry as it moves to reduce clear cutting, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel consumption and clean up its influence on local water supplies and air pollution.

Catawba (cuh-TAW-buh) is an unincorporated community in York County, South Carolina, United States, southeast of the city of Rock Hill.

A major oil spill from the Colonial Pipeline in a nature reserve near Huntersville, North Carolina, United States, began on July 27, 2020. The spill resulted in approximately 2,000,000 U.S. gallons (7,600,000 L) of gasoline discharge and led to a cleanup effort that is still ongoing and expected to continue for several years. Several sources have noted that the spill is one of the largest in the history of the United States, with EnergyWire calling it "the largest U.S. gasoline pipeline spill on record".

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Overview | New-Indy Catawba Mill" . Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Cancer-causing compound detected at South Carolina paper mill". WFAE 90.7 - Charlotte's NPR News Source. 2022-01-13. Archived from the original on 2022-09-27. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fretwell, Sammy (16 Jan 2022). "Cancer-causing waste found at troubled paper mill on the SC river. How did it get there?". The State. Archived from the original on 13 January 2022. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 "Cancer-causing compound likely seeping into Catawba River from SC paper mill, attorneys say". WFAE 90.7 - Charlotte's NPR News Source. 2022-10-26. Archived from the original on 2023-08-28. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  5. "Who WE Are". newindycontainerboard.com. Archived from the original on 2023-03-25. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  6. 1 2 Brierton, James; Goldner, Brandon (January 28, 2022). "A look inside the New-Indy plant facing $1.1 million fine for foul-smelling chemical emissions". wcnc.com. Archived from the original on 2022-12-08. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  7. "New-Indy Catawba Mill | Daily Updates on Operations". Archived from the original on 2023-05-31. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  8. 1 2 Mclaughlin, Tim (2021-08-17). "Billionaire Kraft's paper mill causes pollution crisis in South Carolina". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2022-10-16. Retrieved 2023-08-28.
  9. Goldner, Brandon (June 21, 2021). "Homeowners near plant said it has caused them nausea, headaches and nose bleeds | EPA inspects New Indy Containerboard". wcnc.com. Archived from the original on 2022-12-09. Retrieved 2023-08-28.