Toxic Fear, Anger Billow From Town’s Two Mills

The two pulp mills on Humboldt Bay may be old, ugly and smell bad, but they provide hundreds of jobs in a rural, job-starved economy.

Those nose-wrinkling odors fuming from the tall smokestacks are “the smell of money,” according to the mills’ defenders. And any threat to the mills stirs a lot of anxiety here on California’s rugged northern coast.

When local environmentalists attacked the sulfurous fumes, the controversy quickly polarized the communities around the storm-swept bay. Then scientists found traces of deadly chemical wastes called dioxins and furans in the smokestack emissions and in fish and crab samples taken near the mills’ waste discharge outfalls.

This unexpected news shocked local residents and pushed Humboldt County smack into the middle of a much larger controversy. Similar dioxin contamination has been found in 102 pulp and paper mills throughout the country, the Environmental Protection Agency reports.

EPA scientists detected traces of cancer-causing dioxins in disposable diapers, milk cartons and other paper products. The findings caught them by surprise. While experts knew the chlorinated dioxins were unwanted byproducts in the making of some herbicides and wood preservatives, no one expected to find them in the wood pulping process.

Just how the dioxins--and their chemical cousins, the furans--are formed is uncertain. Experts say these compounds appear in such minute quantities that their presence--measured in the parts per trillion or quadrillion--went undetected for years. Once loose in the environment, the long-lasting dioxins are readily taken up and stored in the food chain.

Recognition of the dioxin problems is so recent, government regulators haven’t had time to fully assess the dangers or set standards limiting the amounts that can be safely tolerated in the environment.

The deadliest member of this chemical family is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, known as TCDD. Considered by most experts to be the most toxic chemical ever created, TCDD in even the tiniest amounts causes cancers, birth defects and interferes with the immune system in laboratory animals.

“Molecule for molecule . . . this is the most potent carcinogen we’ve ever seen in the laboratory,” said Donald Barnes, director of the EPA Science Advisory Board. While no evidence links TCDD directly to human cancers, he said EPA experts estimate that exposure to dioxins already in the environment may be causing one cancer per 10,000 population.

Here, where the timber industry dominates the economy, the discovery of these chemicals in the mills has triggered a lot of fear and some angry debates, lining neighbor up against neighbor in crowded public hearings.

No one questions the economic importance of the pulp mills out on the sandy spit between Humboldt Bay and the ocean. The mills--operated by Louisiana Pacific Corp. and Simpson Paper Co.--produce nearly 500,000 tons of pulp a year from wood chips. They employ 500 men and women and have a $20-million-a-year payroll.

On the other hand, critics say, the county does have a higher death rate than the national average for some cancers, according to a National Cancer Institute study. They point to Love Canal and Times Beach, dioxin-contaminated communities in New York and Missouri that had to be abandoned, and wonder if the same thing might happen here.

“It’s a big issue,” said businessman Tom McMurray, a former Eureka city councilman and state coastal commissioner. “If the mills closed it would be a massive blow for a community that is already somewhat depressed.”

Mill operators, in an attempt to allay these fears, say the tiny amounts of dioxins and furans found in the environment pose no threat. The pulp companies are working to reduce their odor problems and have announced plans to spend $10 million each on new technology designed to cut chlorine use and reduce dioxin discharges into the ocean.

Keith Newcomer, an Arcata furniture store owner, says trusting the mills isn’t easy. “They tell us that nothing is wrong,” said Newcomer, who likes to surf off the north jetty, near the mill outfall dischargers. “But when I’m surfing I can smell the (effluent), taste it. It’s like kerosene. . . . My eyes and skin burn . . . and I’m nauseous for days.”

Surfers, divers and marine researchers from Humboldt State’s ocean monitoring program report that the coffee-brown plume of effluent is frequently seen riding on the ocean’s surface just beyond the breakers.

The mills report that they discharge 40 million gallons of untreated effluent a day into the ocean. EPA scientists testing these wastes last winter reported finding up to 0.3 of a part per trillion of TCDD and 7.5 parts per trillion of the furan TCDF.

Fish and crab sampled in the discharge area by Humboldt State marine biologists contained up to 16 parts per trillion of TCDD in the fish livers. Furan levels were much higher, running up to 59.8 parts per trillion in the fish liver and 135 parts per trillion in comparable organs in crabs, reports show. While there are no regulatory standards set, a federal Food and Drug Administration health advisory warns against eating fish that contains more than 25 parts per trillion of TCDD.

Industry’s Reaction

When the problems in these two mills are multiplied by 104, an observer can get some idea of the scope of the controversy that now faces the nation’s paper industry. The American Paper Institute--a Washington-based trade group--recognizes the dangers, but tries to put them into a less frightening perspective.

“We know these dioxins and furans are potent chemicals in respect to lab animals,” said API spokeswoman Carol Raulston. “However, the amounts found in association with paper making are well below anything that can cause a human health effect.”

Working with the EPA, the industry group is paying for extensive, industrywide studies of the bleaching process that is used to turn the brown pulp white. Raulston said the industry is committed to developing technology and new pulping procedures that will greatly reduce dioxins and furans from waste emissions.

Not waiting for the results of these studies, Louisiana Pacific and Simpson paid a private consultant--the Radian Corp. of Texas--$200,000 to assess the risks posed by the levels of dioxins and furans found in their mills’ effluent and marine life. Using a new assessment technique that has not been approved by EPA, Radian found the risks insignificant.

Environmentalists called Radian’s work “voodoo toxicology” and warned that the firm had grossly understated the dioxin pollution dangers. Federal and state regulators questioned the Radian findings because the study’s sampling base was so small, they said.

Radian spokesman Bill Greinke said, “We stand behind our findings and our choice of criteria used.” He said the Radian risk assessment was intended only as a “gross screening study” to quickly determine if any dangers existed. He said the new technique, while not approved by EPA, is more realistic than the more conservative government-approved methods.

Robert Gearheart--a Humboldt State University professor of environmental engineering and co-director of the university’s ocean discharge monitoring program--gives the mills credit for trying to solve the dioxin problems. However, he said their attempts to control the public debate and play down the environmental and public health issues are counterproductive.

“Relations between the mills and the community are not good. . . . They are more polarized now than they’ve ever been,” said Gearheart, who also serves on a citizens’ committee overseeing a study of air emissions from the mill stacks.

Pressured by community concerns, the North Coast Air Quality Management District earlier this year ordered the industry to do a study of emissions and assess the cancer risks. Results of the study--also done by Radian--won’t be released until Wednesday, but district officials say dioxins, furans and chloroform have been detected in the stack gases.

Detailed reports of these findings and Radian’s assessment of the risks are expected to touch off yet another round of heated public hearings and further divide people living in Eureka, Arcata, Samoa and half a dozen smaller communities in and around the bay. Already critics are saying that this study understates the health risks. “Some people want to run industry out of town and will use any method they can,” Humboldt County Supervisor Harry Prichard said. An acknowledged ally of the timber industry, Prichard also chairs the North Coast AQMD board of directors. “We have the cleanest air of anywhere in the state,” he said.

When asked who wanted to get rid of the mills, Prichard referred to Ida Honoroff, a 75-year-old local activist, and “People for Clean Air and Pure Water,” a committee that she helped form.

Honoroff insists that she doesn’t want to close the mills or drive away jobs. “I just want them to clean up their act,” she said. Shortly after moving here from Los Angeles three years ago, she launched an all-out attack on the “putrid stench” from the mills. It wasn’t long before she was protesting the discharge of toxic wastes and charging that government regulators weren’t enforcing the laws.

During public hearings on noxious odors, Honoroff and her group of “50 to 100 concerned citizens” battled Prichard and the North Coast AQMD staff, contending that the district was protecting mills at the cost of the environment.

The first public hearing on the issue, in June, 1987, was so packed with mill hands that opponents were locked out by police citing fire laws.

After complaints about the lockout, the state Air Resources Board ordered a second public hearing. It was held in the Eureka High School gym, attracted nearly 1,000 people and lasted 10 hours. When it was over the district board named a five-member advisory committee to oversee a study--which resulted in the Radian report to be released Wednesday.

The committee--chaired by Charles Sassenwrath, the district’s executive director--has been embroiled in disagreement. Two committee members, Gearheart and Eureka businessman Larry Glass, said the mills pressured the district to limit the study to a hunt for carcinogens. They also are critical of the final report.

Glass said the study “found dioxin and furans in stacks, plus large amounts of chloroform, chlorine dioxide and some other things. . . . Their conclusion is that only two people in a million would come down with cancer.” He said he couldn’t tell how that risk was determined.

Called Worthless

Honoroff said the report “isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. . . . It doesn’t address most of the problems. . . . We are concerned about illnesses, respiratory diseases and the fact that some (pregnant) women here can’t carry to term.”

Sassenwrath, who refused to discuss the Radian findings pending the official release Wednesday, defended the scope of the study, saying that the law allowed the district to look only for listed carcinogens. Other health concerns and water quality issues are the jurisdiction of other government agencies, he said. He said Radian used several risk-assessment techniques on this report, including the controversial method used on the fish and crab study.

Industry officials said the focus of this study was on cancer risks, but indicated that other, more inclusive studies may be done in the future.

“Our big cry to the community is, ‘Trust us, we are professionals,’ ” said Louisiana Pacific spokesman Shep Tucker. He pointed out that his company alone is putting $70 million into plant modernization efforts, including $10 million to reduce dioxin emissions. “We hear (the critics) and we’ve dedicated the dollars (to make changes),” he said.