CROSSETT -- The harshest critics of this south Arkansas town's paper mill said they were happy -- with some reservations -- Thursday night with environmental regulators' actions against the mill, the town's largest employer.
Government officials, Georgia-Pacific leaders, Crossett residents and others concerned with the business of the Crossett paper mill met Thursday night to discuss a proposed consent decree assessing penalties and requiring technological improvements to the tune of millions of dollars.
The consent decree is good news for some who have criticized the mill's air emissions. Monitoring shows that hydrogen sulfide, a rotten egg-smelling gas, is often emitted at levels high enough to cause a stench and aggravate sinuses.
"I think they're doing a fantastic job so far in the improvements that they've made," said David Bouie, a pastor and leader of the Concerned Citizens of Crossett. "There's just so much more to be done."
Thursday night's meeting included an under 20-minute presentation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Crossett Middle School cafeteria. After a brief question-and-answer session among the about three dozen attendees and government officials, an EPA official announced, to some resident objections, that residents could ask any further questions of officials in private instead of in front of the group.
The proposed consent decree -- agreed to by the EPA, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and Georgia-Pacific -- would be the first major action taken against the mill regarding hydrogen sulfide emissions. It stems from a 2015 inspection of mill facilities that found dozens of violations, including leaks, monitoring failures and improper procedures. The EPA alleged the company was in violation of the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. A 2015 inspection of the company's chemical plant found numerous failures to properly control formaldehyde -- a carcinogenic chemical in high enough concentrations -- within plant processes.
Under the consent decree, the paper mill must pay $600,000 in fines and spend at least $1.8 million on environmental projects and even more on facility upgrades -- many already completed -- to reduce hydrogen sulfide. The company must also post three years of air monitoring results, in real time, on a website not yet created and send alerts to residents when the amount of hydrogen sulfide in the air exceeds 70 parts per billion over a 30-minute average.
On a night in which the smell of the mill's air emissions hung low in the fog above the city, the EPA said air quality had been improving. It's been nearly two years since monitors recorded concentrations high enough to warrant alerting residents, they said.
Some residents agreed that the air seemed to be better but insisted the smell still lingered, particularly on nights like Thursday.
Bouie and others are wary of other chemicals that are not monitored, such as formaldehyde and benzene. Those chemicals are reported annually as a part of the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, where they are logged in terms of tons released throughout the previous year. But they are not monitored by their concentrations in the air, the way hydrogen sulfide is. Concentrations indicate a chemical's hazard level.
"They've got some bad boys out there," Bouie said. "We know because we live out there."
After the meeting, Sarah Frey, the EPA's enforcement officer on the Georgia-Pacific case, said the formaldehyde violations cited in the inspection had to do with controls of the chemical, not releases of it, and that benzene is more commonly a water quality concern.
Wilma Subra, a scientist who has been studying the air and water quality in Crossett, said ongoing air monitoring "clearly shows" Georgia-Pacific's upgrades have improved the air quality. She remains concerned, however, about the quality of water discharged from the mill's wastewater treatment system, she said.
"I have to be thankful for what I get," Subra said of the settlement agreement.
Mike Smith, 54, executive director of the Crossett Economic Development Foundation, criticized EPA officials after the session for not giving the town's business community the same notice that people who have complained about the air quality received. Smith said he had learned of the meeting two days before.
The meeting had been previously scheduled for Jan. 15 but was postponed because of the partial federal government shutdown that ran from Dec. 22 to Jan. 25.
An EPA official told Smith that Thursday's meeting was hastily scheduled because the prospect of another shutdown looms on Feb. 15.
Smith told reporters after the exchange that he believes concerns about Crossett's air quality have "been blown out of proportion." The town's reputation makes it a challenge to recruit businesses to the area, he said.
"We're a small town in southeast Arkansas," Smith said. "We don't need another hurdle" for business recruitment.
Metro on 02/08/2019