The Mountaineer

A discharge permit required for Blue Ridge Paper Products, doing business as Evergreen Packing, Inc. in Canton that expired in October 2006 should be ready for public review soon. A hearing on the highly technical document is likely to be held in the county in January.

Sergei Chernikov, who has been overseeing the Canton facility’s discharge permit for the N.C. Department of Natural Resources and Conversation Division of Water Quality, said because the company applied for a new permit within the proper timelines, the former permit is in place until a new one is approved.

The permit is required under the 1972 Federal Clean Water Act, which sets guidelines for entities discharging wastewater into waters within the U.S.

“The permit is ready and has been ready for quite a while,” Chernikov said. “It is a complicated document and it took some time to negotiate with Tennessee and the EPA. Since there are three hearing officers, we’re trying to find a date that works for all of them and that has been exceedingly difficult.”

The permit, as drafted, complies with federal law and that of both North Carolina and Tennessee, states directly affected by the Pigeon River below the mill.

In past years, the mill has asked for a variance on the allowable color standards imposed by North Carolina law (not the federal government or Tennessee) due to the brownish tint of the discharge, but Chernikov said that variance wasn’t needed for the permit now being considered.

That’s because pollution control measures have been judged to be successful under the clean water requirements. Chernikov spoke of a report prepared by Norman Liebergott, an international consultant who concluded that of the 100 or so paper mills he’s studied, the Canton operation is superior.

“Based on his findings, and we agree, this is one of the best paper mills in the world,” Chernikov said.

One variance that will be requested in the permit is for temperature, he said.

Hope Taylor, who works with the Clean Water for NC organization, accused the N.C. DENR’s Division of Water Quality of waging a PR campaign against strengthening the requirements for cleaning up the discharge from the Canton facility to the Pigeon River for many years.

“Clearly this tradition is continuing,” she wrote. “Dr. Leibergott worked with CWFNC and other environmental groups and BRPP for a joint environmental study back in 2001, in which we all acknowledged that per pound of production only, Blue Ridge had some of the lowest color levels in the world. However, all parties agreed that this was a mill far too large for a small mountain river, and that there was more work to be done to restore water quality in the river.”

Leibergott’s original study pointed to several cost-effective approaches to continuing to reduce color from the mill, Taylor noted. He began working strictly on behalf of the mill several years ago, and his most recent study still points to several ways to continue cleaning up the river. The 1998 settlement agreement on the Pigeon, signed by Champion, EPA, North Carolina, Tennessee and environmental groups called for the continued clean up of the river “at the quickest possible pace.”

The officials from all three agencies will hold a stakeholders meeting in Tennessee and a public hearing in Haywood in a two-day period, likely at the and of January.

The water quality issue in the Pigeon River below the Canton mill became an issue last week after three Haywood landowners, Kenneth Cole, Grover Payne and Joe Haynes, initiated a class action lawsuit alleging the mill creates a nuisance that substantially interferes with their rights of use and enjoy their property. The trio is represented by Knoxville law firm Ball and Scott, which has successfully sued Blue Ridge on behalf of Tennessee landowners on three occasions.