JAY – The Planning Board has hired a Topsham engineering firm to evaluate and determine the cause of soot discharges from Wausau Paper’s Otis Mill and to make recommendations to eliminate them.
The $6,100 for Wright-Pierce will come out of the environmental account, paid for by the permit fees industries pay to the town, Jay Code Enforcement Officer Shiloh Ring said Friday.
The owner of Franchetti’s Home Town Market, Fred Franchetti, complained to the Planning Board in July about the recurring soot problem and damage to vehicles, Ring said.
Franchetti’s store is just outside the mill’s parking lot on Main Street.
The town’s Environmental Control and Improvement Ordinance sets environmental guidelines on industries to protect air, water and land quality.
The town regulates the paper company’s soot incidents under a special condition in the town-issued air permit. The permit prohibits discharge of air contaminates in a volume that soils or damages property, or has an adverse effect on public health, safety or welfare.
The mill has a history of periodically producing soot emissions in the form of dry or wet acid-laden particles that rise from the stack and fall onto the mill parking lot and residential areas downwind of the mill, according to background information on the company’s permit.
The town had required the mill to form a soot abatement audit group in 2002 to monitor mill operations and conditions regularly.
The mill continues to make repairs and changes to try to prevent soot from being emitted.
Wright-Pierce engineer Melissa Hamkins will review the company’s file, including board orders, complaints and previous studies addressing past soot discharges to identify: how and why discharges occurred; what process changes and/or corrective actions were recommended and what corrective actions were or were not taken in the past.
Hamkins plans to evaluate the mill configuration, the steam plant, set up operations and how they run the boiler to make process recommendations to eliminate the soot discharges, Ring said.
Hamkins is expected to submit a report on her findings this fall.
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