Rayonier Water Discharge Permit Settlement Update

Written in July 2005 by Rayonier for ARK's website

In April 2002, The Altamaha Riverkeeper (ARK) and Rayonier entered into an agreement to address concerns about odor, foam and color in Rayonier's treated wastewater discharged from the Jesup mill into the Altamaha River. ARK met with Rayonier on May 5, 2005 to review the progress achieved to date and discuss on-going work.

Since entering the agreement, Rayonier has identified and implemented measures to prevent mill discharge from creating foam and to substantially decrease the characteristic odor of Kraft mill effluent. Color, however, has proven to be a more complex and difficult issue than was anticipated when ARK and Rayonier entered into the agreement. Despite everyone's best efforts, the biological treatment testing has not produced a reliable process for reducing color in the effluent.

In the Summer of 2002, Rayonier started working with outside experts to identify and refine a biological treatment process for mill wastewater. Initial trials used purchased micro-organisms to treat color in one of the mill's two aeration stabilization basins. The results were not promising and, Rayonier shifted its focus to the mill's compost cells. Mill employees had observed a noticeable reduction in the color of these cells, but the exact mechanism was not known.

In early 2003, Rayonier partnered with outside experts to identify the naturally occurring color removal process in the compost cells and develop a color removal process for mill use. Initial laboratory tests were very encouraging and significant color removal was observed. The data generated was sufficient to support a patent application that has been filed with the U.S. Patent Office. However, long term bench scale tests and a mill pilot test run in the Summer of 2004 could not reliably repeat the laboratory results. While this is disappointing, it underlines the complexity of the issue and the challenges associated with research and development on complex biological processes. In 2005, a revised research plan was adopted and experiments that began in the Spring are continuing this Summer.

In addition to treating effluent color in the mill's wastewater treatment system, Rayonier is also identifying methods for reducing the amount of color in process wastewater streams before they reach the wastewater treatment system. Because reducing color at the mill is everyone's responsibility, two teams, whose members are employees from across the mill representing a variety of jobs, were chartered. The first team was asked to look at the entire pulping process and look for viable technologies that will both produce a quality product for Rayonier's customers and reduce the amount of color in the process wastewater. The second team is identifying, recommending, and implementing mill practices that will reduce the amount of color that reaches the wastewater treatment system because of process upsets, equipment leaks or other unplanned events.

ARK and Rayonier remain committed to reducing color in the treated effluent from the Jesup Mill. While it is taking more time than we had hoped, we believe the ongoing research and mill-wide emphasis on reducing color will bring us closer to our mutual goal of reducing color discharged to the Altamaha. Note from ARK: ARK remains committed to working with Rayonier to insure that their wastewater discharge to the Altamaha River is cleaned up. We are indeed disappointed that the research to date has not resulted in significant improvements to the color of the discharge. However we have seen Rayonier dedicate significant resources to addressing this problem and believe that their efforts to date will ultimately result in long-term improvements. We will keep you updated on developments that result from these various efforts.