Paper Mill Output Slows, Seedlings Dying in Drought

Low water levels in the drought-seared Southeast are forcing a slowdown in paper mill production and killing thousands of pine tree seedlings, authorities said Tuesday.

Champion International has announced that 25 employees at its paper mill in Canton, N.C., are taking unpaid leaves or vacations and others are being shifted to maintenance work. Up to 100 or more could be laid off out of a work force of 1,983 once all maintenance work is finished, plant Manager J. Oliver Blackwell said.

He said Champion’s water shortage became critical when a lake on plant property dropped too low to supplement intake from the Pigeon River, which is half its normal flow.

Builds Holding Basin

In South Carolina, Bowater Inc., the nation’s largest producer of newsprint, is avoiding production cuts at its Catawba plant by building a 1.4-billion-gallon holding basin for waste water. The Wateree River is too low to dilute the waste sufficiently to meet water quality standards, public relations manager Edward Haws said.

Nearly one of every four pine seedlings planted in Georgia this year has withered, state officials said. The seedling death rates in South Carolina and Alabama are even higher, driving the cost from loss of trees in the three states to more than $21 million.

An estimated 100,000 acres of pine seedlings in Georgia will have to be replanted, Forestry Commission Director John Mixon said. In Alabama, two-thirds of the 300,000 acres planted this year have died.

The drought is also making mature trees, especially those weakened by age and previous dry spells, more vulnerable to disease and insects.

“I’m afraid many of the trees won’t make it,” Atlanta city arborist Susan Newell said.

More Hay Arrives

Meanwhile, hay continued to be moved into the Southeast to help feed cattle in dusty pastures.

A 71-car train with 1,440 tons of hay donated by Vermont farmers arrived in Georgia on Tuesday, with distribution planned today, and a 94-car train of fodder from Wisconsin and Minnesota arrived at Birmingham, Ala.

But, while farmers in parts of Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas are depending on donated hay from across the nation, the city of Woodbury, Ga., has harvested three crops of hay this year and expects to cut two more before the season ends.

“Our problem is getting into the field before the hay gets too high for cutting,” said Robert Lovett, superintendent of water and waste-water treatment.

Since 1979, the town’s treated waste water has been sprayed on a 45-acre field rather than dumped into the Flint River. Last season’s gross income from the hay was about $8,000, Lovett said.