Walden Security

Burning Up Boilers

KDRV, 9/28/2011
By Bryan Navarro

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. — The Environmental Protection Agency is putting forward new regulations that have timber mills against the ropes.
Emission control, upgrading equipment, and reclassifying wood chips. Boise Cascade officials say if the changes go through, and they're interpreted at their most severe, the company could be forced to shut down.

Boise and Congressman Walden say the regulations are well intentioned, but they haven't got it right.

"Nobody's looking at what happens when all these agencies sort of put out these rules and what that means collectively and can they afford that and can they even comply?" Congressman Walden says.

It could mean fixing Boise's three boilers, costing more than four million dollars.

Another proposed change would reclassify wood chips.

"The part of the tree that we cant make plywood or big beams out of we burn, and it's energy recovery. Makes it possible for us to minimize our footprint by not having to buy natural gas," explains Bruce Cartmel, the manager for the Western Oregon region of Boise Cascade.

If those regulations go through, wood chips would be called waste products.

"That in and of itself would be so horrendously oppresive in terms of land filing, residuals, replacing with natural gas it would probably put us out of business," Cartmel says.

Congressman Walden is co-sponsoring the EPA Relief Act, which would give the EPA 15 additional months to re-evaluate their regulations, hoping for a second look, before mills go up in smoke. That EPA relief act passed the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Committee by a bipartisan vote of 36-14. Congressman Walden says it could be voted on in the House floor in the next few weeks.