To air pollution device
Repairs to a Potlatch Corp, air pollution control device damaged in a flash fire earlier this month may be delayed until July as the result of an agreement with the Idaho office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Lynn E. Rolig, vice president of the company’s pulp and paperboard division at Lewiston, said he was informed Wednesday by Kenneth Brooks, EPA chief of air quality programs for Idaho, that the electronic precipitator on the No. 3 recovery furnace is functioning well enough to keep emissions within the standards enforceable by EPA.
Shutting down now for repairs would cause seven to 10 days of lost production and the layoff of an undetermined number of employees, Rolig said. Some $1.6 million in new emission controls will be added during the annual July shutdown, and “... it would make sense to wait until then to make repairs to the existing precipitator, as long as operation isn’t causing environmental problems,” he said.
In the meantime, Potlatch has voluntarily agreed to refrain from using two older Kidwell boilers normally operated only when their modern counterparts break down, Rolig said.
The revised operating procedure will keep emissions below the federal standards set by the 1975 Clean Air Act currently being enforced by the EPA. But emissions still exceed state-permitted limits, Rolig and Brooks said in separate statements.
Emissions from the furnace are largely sodium sulfate, which creates a whitish haze in the atmosphere, but is not considered harmful to health in the amounts involved, according to Brooks.
Currently, any agreements made with Potlatch are on a voluntary basis and with the cooperation of the company, Brooks said. Until the EPA approves the promulgation of the stricter Idaho emission standards, he has no power to enforce them, he said.
Under the old arrangement with the state, Potlatch had agreed never to fire more than two of four old Kidwell boilers with wood wastes at one time. Brooks said. Now, he is asking that it refrain from using wood at all and instead use the gas-fired option on the boilers, he said.
The Idaho standards are being reviewed at the EPA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, from where they will be sent to the Office of Management and Budget.
Brooks hopes to receive final word by the end of January.
If the Idaho limits are adopted, then current emissions from the boiler would be in excess of what is permissible, he said. “Given that situation, then we would have to reconsider and determine what would have to be done next.”
What probably would happen, he said, is that the EPA would formalize the current voluntary agreement with Potlatch.
Considering that the boiler is not running uncontrolled but merely at a lower efficiency, that there would be a substantial economic impact on the company if it had to shut down prior to July and that the environmental impact is being offset at other points in the plant, “it would not be an unreasonable, I think, approach to the problem on our part,” Brooks said.
It’s a complicated situation, Brooks said. The EPA was never envisioned by Congress as the enforcement agency behind the Clear Air Act and Congress didn’t provide it with the authority to act in day-to-day situations faced by state air control bureaus.
“I guess the bottom line to that is we sincerely hope the situation in Idaho right now is a temporary one and the state legislature when it convenes in January will see fit to re-fund and re-establish the state-operated air pollution control program,” he said.
This story was published in the Dec. 24, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
