Trucks have hauled about half of the pulping liquors besieging the grounds of the Samoa Pulp Mill away, and the crawl of tankers continues steadily up to Longview, Washington, where the liquors are being refined and reused by a mill.
Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District CEOJack Crider said the process has been smooth except for a three-week period where the boiler at the destination mill underwent repairs. That shutdown had a silver lining though, as workers on the Samoa site were able to go home for a while. “A lot of those folks had been on property there for four months,” Crider said. “There’s somewhere between a dozen and 20 people. Add that along with the truck drivers we’re actually creating a little bit of an economic boom.”
The Harbor District is working to lease a portion of the property to Coast Seafoods, which will have a footprint on the property similar to Taylor Shellfish, which will also produce oysters at the former pulp mill site.
A pellet manufacturer has also agreed to lease space at the mill, and Crider said another promising business is in talks as well, though he couldn’t identify the business because of a non-disclosure agreement.
As things hum along, Crider said the Environmental Protection Agency is continuing its investigation into Evergreen, the company that abandoned the mill in 2008.
The Harbor District, in agreeing to take the mill site, assumed responsibility of hauling the liquors off site. The costs of the other cleanup, Crider said, should fall to Evergreen. “We feel very strongly that they are the responsible party.”
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This article appears in Lion Stories.
Can we not find a local use for some of the ‘pulp liquor’?
How about a unique secret ingredient in one of our fine Humboldt microbrews?
Previous Evergreen Vice President and current Humboldt County supervisor Rex Bohn might be able to shed some light on why the Harbor District is undertaking the cleanup. Just wondering if my dock space rent is helping to pay for this or is it on the taxpayer’s dime. A little transparency would be welcome here……..
Transparency no longer merits follow-up reporting. Sorry you missed it the first time before it was flushed down the memory hole.
Everything that happens since then is “new” and unrelated to the past!
There is no context!
Forget it! Move on!
It goes like this:
Another industry hack is elected supervisor, they get the county to sign a “Hold Harmless Clause” relieving industry of liability, then return to a high-paying industry job after “serving the public”.
Our local government/industry revolving door operates just like the one in Washington D.C.
If “community media” treated the public reality as news worthy of follow-ups, (and shared a little outrage with THEIR community), many more folks would be interested in voting the bastards out.
80 years of surrounding Humboldt bay in unaccountable brownfields and you want this process reported?
This is the legacy that gave Supervisor Bass the chutzpah to promise “hundreds of new jobs on our bay” without one assurance about the environmental safety of a wood-pellet factory…
She knew damn-well not one reporter would ask.