It seems that after several years of hard economic times in the pulp and paper industry, things are just not getting any better. Word is that Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, by far one of the lowest cost paper operations in the country, is facing more uncertainty with upwards of 100 upon and management positions as well as other cuts on the way.

Fact is, even with signs of life in the Canadian economy, things south of the border and in Europe are still pretty bad. Add to the fact that, due to a surge in tablet technology and an ever-increasing on-line presence, not many people are even reading newspapers anymore.

Although somewhat bruised and battered, the Corner Brook mill has survived through some pretty tough economic times, largely due to some pretty smart investments and upgrades made to the mill since Kruger took it over in 1984, cutbacks in operations over the years, the opening up of new markets, low-cost energy coming out of Deer Lake and a port facility which provides easy and open access to major shipping routes year round.

Yet Kruger is hurting, and hurting bad in all their operations, not just in Corner Brook.  This privately held company with its four paper mills located in eastern Canada has never been too fond of public scrutiny, and perhaps as a result, people have not been too fond of the company. It used to be that the mill was the lifeblood of the community, but not anymore, or so it seems.

Indeed, for the past decade or more, it seems that the only news coming from the newspaper industry in this province at all has been bad news. First the Stephenville Abitibi mill closed in 2006, then it was Grand Falls turn in 2009. Many people figured it was only a matter of time before the Corner Brook mill shut its doors, but in spite of all the negativity, they continue to hang on.

Sadly, it sometimes seems that certain people want the mill to shut, as if the approximately $175 million they bring into the provincial economy is not worth the trouble or as if the close to 600 jobs at the mill have no value in the region. According to the company website, CBPP Woodlands employs 275 employees in their harvest and silvculture operations in almost 50 Newfoundland communities.

The Company employs another 400 people at the mill in Corner Brook and the Deer Lake Power Company. Yet, some people falsely believe that the closure of the Corner Brook will even have little effect on this City and the 21 other communities that depend directly on the Mill to purchase their wood chips and hog fuel from their sawmill operations that keep the mill’s boilers churning.

I have often heard people say that Stephenville and Grand Falls faired surprisingly well after each of their mill’s shut down, as if loosing a major employer is a good thing. Perhaps if we ask all the displaced workers in those two much smaller operations in two much smaller communities how they like travelling back and forth to the oil patch in Alberta to work, you might get a different point of view.

600 direct jobs is 600 families, most of them in Corner Brook, but many of them all around the Bay of Islands and the Humber Valley. 600 well-paying jobs is somewhere around another 1800 additional jobs in our communities that depend indirectly on the mill for their livelihood – from banks to bakeries, from grocery stores to gas stations, from retail outlets to recreation sales – the mill and its workers have a significant impact on this community and region.

While the mill may no longer be the largest employer in the area, it is perhaps the only remaining industry, besides the troubled fishing industry, that continues to pump money into the region from outside. And while Corner Brook has lost almost all of its manufacturing industries over the years – North Star Cement, Lafarge Gypsum and others, the mill has managed to keep on going, through innovation, investment and sheer ingenuity.

Sure the hospital is now the largest employer and sure we have post-secondary education and other government services to fall back on, but all of these jobs depend on our tax dollars that we all pay to the province to provide these services. This is not new money coming in from the outside through the sale of goods and services such as the sale of a ton of newsprint to Chile or Brazil. In many cases, it’s just recycling the same money over and over – tax dollars go into government, government sends pay-checks to its employees-government employees pay taxes back into government.

But what happens if we have 600 less families who require government services and what happens when several hundred other indirect jobs are loss? Well, some of those government jobs may no longer be required, fewer teachers, fewer nurses, fewer government clerks – as well as fewer mechanics, grocery clerks and real estate agents – it’s becomes one big vicious circle leading to a downward economic spiral!

Don’t get me wrong, this is not the only possibility, but it is perhaps the one we think of most when we think about troubles at the mill. Yet this doesn’t have to be the case at all. There are many opportunities out there for the forestry industry, which through innovation and a little hard work, can help change things around. The question is, why are we not even making the effort before it’s too late?

Why not, for instance, revive the “District Energy” heating plan that has been sitting on the back burner for a couple of years now. Imagine using the waste heat from the mill to heat all of the building in the downtown core of the City right up to the Long Term Care centre and beyond. Why not? They do it everywhere else, from Paris to Stockholm, from Malmo to Moscow. It’s not rocket science and would provide much-needed revenue to the mill while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels to heat our buildings in winter.

Then there is sewerage treatment. With new federal Wastewater Regulations coming into effect in the near future, why is the City of Corner Brook not pursuing a plan to at least have some of the City’s raw sewerage go into the Mill’s existing sewerage treatment facilities? Again, the mill could use the revenues and the city can jump-start sewerage treatment by diverting our raw sewerage to an existing treatment facility instead of allowing it to go directly into the bay. If we have to wait for water treatment first before we start planning for sewerage treatment, we will never get there, nor will we ever be able to afford it. It’s time to start using our collective heads a little on this one!

There are also opportunities in Waste Management and energy production that are available to use, but which continue to go unexplored. There are in fact so many other possibilities out there to help ensure the longevity of the Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Mill and by extension, the survival and prosperity of Corner Brook and region, that it seems most unfortunate that there appears to be little interest or desire to even look at these options.

The survival of the Mill will impact the survival of this community and dozens of smaller communities all around the province. There are many things we could and should do to rally around the mill and its employees and yet we seem quite content to sit back and think that the closure of this once mighty industrial engine that put the “Hum on the Humber” will have little or no effect on us. Well think again! Think about the workers and their families who depend on the Mill for their livliehoods. Think about what could be happening while the mill is still operating, think about what we could be doing as a community to make our mill stronger, more competitive, more profitable. But don’t just think about it, do something about it and show your support, because if ever it is gone, it will be too late to say we should have done something as we wave goodbye to our sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, as they get on that plane and head off for Alberta!

See also: Waste Management and Wasted opportunities for some over ideas.

Ever since the concept of “waste management” was introduced to the Newfoundland municipal vocabulary, it seems like we here on the West Coast of the island have been stuck in neutral, while the Avalon and Central regions have simply passed us by.

Typical landfill operation

When Environment Minister Kevin Aylward first announced the Provincial Waste Management Strategy back in April, 2002, the goal was to “to eliminate open burning at disposal sites by 2005 and phase out the use of incinerators by 2008, to phase out use of unlined landfill sites by 2010 and to implement full province-wide modern waste management by 2010.”  2010 became 2012. In May 2007, the Provincial Government announced implementation of the $200 million Provincial Waste Management Strategy, with a goal for full provincial implementation by 2020. The strategy calls for three full-service regional waste management facilities on the Avalon, Central and Western areas of the island portion of the province.

With a current target date 2016, it is all but impossible for the Western Regional Waste Management Committee to meet its target for a new waste management site on the West Coast.

Curbside Paper Recycling

It could still happen of course, but it is unlikely. And while it is common practice to blame the provincial government, who no doubt shares some of the responsibility for the delays in seeing this project to completion, I would suggest that the problem is much deeper than that.

In fact, I would argue, that if the roughly 20 communities who have been using the City of Corner Brook owned and operated Wild Cove landfill site for the last 50 years or so had been willing to put their individual differences aside and seize the opportunities that were available to them in the past, the west coast would now be the model for the rest of the province to follow. But with an “anywhere but Wild Cove” attitude from many of the communities at the table, progress has been excruciatingly slow, so slow in fact as to virtually eliminate all possibilities of having a waste management site on the west coast.

The plan now is to truck our waste across the province to a larger, expanded facility in Norris Arm. Now, this is not a terrible idea, after all they do it everywhere else in the world. However, this current plan to truck waste comes with a caveat – the province has to agree to pick up the trucking costs by providing a subsidy to the Western Regional Waste Management Committee which will eventually become an authority responsible for collection and handling of waste in the Western region.

IF the province does agree to this subsidy, which has been on the table for the past several years, what are the chances that it will last more than 1 term of government? With estimates of an additional $ 150 – $ 200 per household just for the disposal of waste, how many municipalities will be able to afford to pay the trucking costs in addition to the disposal charges, should some future government decide not to continue the subsidy, if the current government even agrees to it in the first place?

No doubt there is great incentive for the province to commit to the idea of trucking waste to the central facility - after all they would save somewhere between $ 40 and $ 80 million for a new waste management site for the West Coast. The province would have to invest additional funds into the central facility, but then with the closure of Abitibi Price Mill in Grand Falls –Windsor, this would be a welcome investment by that region and would certainly cost much less than building a new, west coast facility.

And then there are the jobs that go with it. Depending on the type of facility and the amount of sorting and recycling, there would have been somewhere between 60 -70 jobs created at a west coast facility, but perhaps, we really don’t need all those jobs here!

Yet, we have heard very little from the Western Regional Waste Management Committee on these matters, a committee which is made up of municipal leaders appointed by the province. They are quietly doing their job, working with the consultants and making recommendations to government. Everyone seems to be in agreement that we should take a chance on getting a subsidy and ship our waste to central – out of sight, out of mind, as they say. Or at least until the subsidy runs out or is cut off and then the municipalities in the western region will have no choice but to impose the fee onto its residents – on top of what we will all be paying for the new system from now on – anywhere from $120 – $175 per household.

So, what could we have done? Well, for starters, a clean-up effort of the current Wild Cove site could have been undertaken long ago. The City of Corner brook, like every other municipality in the province is contributing 20% of their Federal Gas tax to Waste management, so funds are available for this purpose. And as we all know the longer we wait, the more it will cost. So, why are we not moving forward on this?

Geosynthetic landfill cell liner

For instance, several years ago we had come up with the idea of land-fill mining. The Wild Cove landfill site is divided into cells, each one lasting anywhere from 1-3 years depending on the volume of fill put into it. Landfill Mining and Reclamation is a simple process whereby solid wastes which have previously been land filled are excavated and processed. Typically, these operations use a variety of equipment such as excavators, screens, conveyors and a rotating trommel screen to dig, sort and recycle materials that have lain in the waste site for years. In the process, waste material is excavated and transported to a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt transfers the waste to the trommel screen. Material then passes through the screen openings and is used as soil amendment.

Trommel Screen

Material that is retained in the screen is taken by conveyor belt to a resource recovery area where manual separation is used to recover ferrous metals and other recyclable materials. What’s left over can be placed into an environmentally friendly lined cell and covered over. It’s a very simple process that has been used in hundreds of landfills all over the world for decades which could free up to 30% of space at the current site.

Another interesting option is “gasification”. Gasification is a process that converts organic or fossil based carbonaceous materials into carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane. This is achieved by reacting the material at high temperatures (>700°C), without combustion, with a controlled amount of oxygen and/or steam. The resulting gas mixture is called syngas (from synthesis gas or synthetic gas). The power derived from gasification of biomass and combustion of the resultant gas is considered to be a source of renewable energy.

Gasification Plant

According to Natural Resources Canada, The process of gasification breaks down nearly any carbon-based feedstock into its basic constituents allowing easy removal of pollutants. Materials that can be gasified include coal, petroleum coke, heavy oils, chemical wastes, biomass, and municipal solid waste. In high-temperature gasification these fuels are reacted with oxygen at high pressure to produce clean synthetic gas for efficient electricity generation. This process can produce feedstocks for high-value chemical products, clean transportation fuels, and fuel cells and hydrogen for near zero emissions power generation and fuel cells.

If properly implemented, gasification technology can greatly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Advanced gasification technology, with carbon sequestration and storage, can capture and permanently store 90% of the carbon dioxide that would normally be emitted from power and hydrogen production facilities using fossil

Nexterra Biomass Gasification

fuels (including coal). Successful demonstration and implementation of this technology could nearly eliminate coal-related GHG emissions and pollution thus improving Canada’s environment, health, and economic strength. Gasification is expensive, and it is doubtful that there is currently enough waste on the West Coast alone to justify the expense, unless of course, we consider other alternatives, such as combining gasification of municipal waste with a large, energy hungry, industrial facility such as Corner Brook Pulp and Paper or a district heating project that could heat all of the downtown core of the city.

Such things are possible and are being done everywhere around the world. So, instead of continuing to do the same old thing we have always done, perhaps it’s time we started to consider some real solutions to the problem of waste management that can deal with our current problem and help reduce future problems. Consider it a Christmas gift to the planet in this, the season of mass consumption and waste creation.