The Clinton-Industry Cluster: EPA and Business Assure a Future of Dirty Paper Making

by Todd Paglia

FOUR YEARS AGO, the Clinton Administration considered promulgating an executive order which would have required the federal government to purchase totally chlorine-free (TCF) paper to satisfy a small portion of its paper needs. The proposal also required that, with certain exceptions, the federal government would purchase only recycled paper.

The goal of the executive order was to encourage the use of recycled paper to reduce pressure on landfills, and to decrease domestic reliance on chlorine-based paper bleaching processes that produce dioxin, one of the most toxic human-made substances. The order also sought to use the federal government's purchasing power to encourage industry to invest in recycling and chlorine-free paper production technologies.

Enter the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA). AF&PA adamantly opposed the executive order. In a clever strategy intended to divide environmentalists, AF&PA lobbyists maneuvered the executive order policy debate into a choice between TCF or recycled paper procurement, but not both. TCF soon fell by the wayside. AF&PA had succeeded in eliminating federal procurement of this environmentally preferable paper.

Today, TCF commands more than 25 percent of the pulp market in Europe, but only an infinitesimal share of the U.S. market.

Last year, the Clinton administration was presented with another opportunity to facilitate the transition to TCF paper -- and again the administration instead caved in to the demands of the AF&PA and other industry lobbyists. This time, the field of contest was the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) "Cluster Rule," a set of pulp and paper industry regulations covering both air and water pollution limits. This rule is extremely important because it is likely to set industry standards for the next decade or longer -- once a standard is established, it is highly unlikely that the industry will be asked to upgrade anytime in the near future.

During the rule-making process, EPA proposed two alternative regulatory options. It ultimately chose the dirtier, industry-preferred alternative. But industry lobbyists' real victory was in defining the terms of debate -- they succeeded in keeping TCF from ever being seriously considered.

EPA'S Limited Options

Many environmental groups' wholehearted support for TCF notwithstanding, the EPA did not even propose it as an alternative in the agency's final rulemaking. Instead, EPA proposed two chlorine-based technologies which will allow continued dioxin pollution, though at reduced levels. Option A, supported by AF&PA and the paper industry, required that the pulp-bleaching stage rely upon chlorine dioxide rather than elemental chlorine bleaching. Option B also favored chlorine dioxide as a bleaching agent but required oxygen delignification in the pulping process. Oxygen delignification is used just before the pulp enters the bleaching plant to reduce the amount of lignin that passes through to the bleach plant. This brightens the pulp and reduces the amount of bleaching required.

EPA justified its rejection of TCF on the grounds that there was insufficient experience with the technology and "and a lack of data for TCF bleaching of softwood to full market brightness." These assertions are, at best, questionable. To the extent that there is any validity to these claims, it is largely a reflection of the Clinton administration's failure to promote TCF with its executive order on paper purchasing -- a decision which practically froze the U.S. paper market in place. U.S. stagnation aside, TCF's 25 percent market share in Europe would appear to provide ample experience with TCF. In addition, a Louisiana-Pacific mill in Somoa, California which uses softwoods has been TCF since 1994.

The European and Louisiana-Pacific examples appear to demonstrate that TCF can satisfy market brightness standards (ignoring the issue of whether those standards should be compromised to protect the environment). Paper is judged on a brightness scale and full market brightness is considered to be more than 85 percent. But EPA admitted in the preamble to the final Cluster Rule that "several non-U.S. mills have reported the production of TCF softwood kraft pulp at full market brightness." And Louisiana-Pacific's mill in Somoa, California has achieved more than 85 percent brightness since 1994 using softwood pulp, with some bleaching cycles exceeding 88 percent brightness. Similarly, European TCF producer Sodra Cell achieved 88 percent brightness with softwood pulp in February 1994.

EPA did throw a bone to TCF proponents. The Cluster Rule adopted an incentives program whereby mills can agree to meet stricter standards, including TCF, and get additional compliance time and "public recognition" for exceeding baseline requirements. But to go TCF or not will remain "a corporate decision," says Wendy Smith of EPA's Office of Water. No corporation had committed to EPA's incentives program when the Cluster Rule was issued.

The Spin

With TCF off the table, environmental groups threw their unanimous support behind Option B. But the Clinton administration did not even give serious consideration to environmentalists' contentions, and in November the EPA adopted Option A as a federal regulation. EPA quickly went into spin control to shine the best light possible on its action, saying in its comments accompanying the rule that the rule would "virtually eliminate dioxin discharges into waterways." EPA failed to mention that many of the 100 bleach mills impacted by the Cluster Rule are already using chlorine dioxide bleaching and therefore will be completely unaffected by Option A.

In EPA's defense, Troy Swackhammer of the agency's Office of Water says that EPA's proposal of chlorine dioxide-oriented rules had already encouraged mills to move away from elemental chlorine bleaching. EPA is unable to show, however, that any mill reacted to the agency's proposed rules. And even if such a shift did occur, Swackhammer's contention begs the far more interesting question of whether there might be more than a single TCF mill in the United States if EPA had proposed or seriously considered a TCF rule.

Environmentalist criticisms were unfounded, EPA claimed in announcing the rule. Option A, it said, would "protect the health of millions of American families who live near pulp and paper mills," primarily by reducing dioxin levels in downstream fish. EPA concluded that the Cluster Rule was judged to have acceptable risks for daily fish consumption rates of 145 grams.

Although most people in the United States rarely eat fish caught downstream from a paper mill, EPA itself estimates that one million people in the United States live near pulp mills and depend on subsistence fishing. Many of these people, especially Native American, African American, Asian American and low-income populations, eat large amounts of fish. EPA's 1994 draft Dioxin Reassessment found that some low-income populations consume as much as 300 grams of fish per person each day and therefore are sure to be exposed to unsafe dioxin levels under the Cluster Rule.

Disputes over acceptable levels of dioxin in fish ignore a more disturbing and overriding reality: the U.S. population is at its limit for exposure to dioxin, according to EPA's draft 1994 Dioxin Reassessment. In other words, the general U.S. population has already met or exceeded the body burden humans are capable of absorbing without negative health impacts. Yet the Cluster Rule imposed a chlorine-based standard under which dioxins, furans and other organo-chlorines will still be allowed to be emitted into the environment. Furthermore, subsistence fishing families with their high fish consumption have likely exceeded the dioxin levels above which health effects occur.

Given the especially high freshwater fish consumption rates of Native Americans, the Cluster Rule "perpetuates the contamination of tribal food supplies and tribal people," says Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network. The rule is a "betrayal of the highest magnitude."

The acceptance of human health risks and inevitable disease and death is particularly disturbing, says Laurie Valeriano, of the Washington (state) Toxics Coalition, because "mills around the world produce pulp without producing deadly chlorinated poisons."

Even the EPA's cost analysis invites skepticism. EPA focused its cost assessment on up-front capital investment, rather than on operating costs. On an operational basis, a new TCF mill is actually less expensive than a traditional chlorine-based mill. And Option B's delignification requirement would have imposed minimal costs on consumers -- between zero and 0.2 cents per five hundred sheets of paper, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for the Greenpeace USA Toxics Campaign. Some of the largest U.S. paper purchasers advocated a tougher rule, Hind notes. "If cost was truly an issue, large paper users such as TIME Magazine, McDonald's, Kinko's and Ben & Jerry's would not have called for a stronger rule," he says.