JAY — State and local environmental overseers have agreed to temporarily suspend monitoring and testing of emissions that go with Wausau Paper’s air-quality permits.

Jay Planning Board members voted to approve the paper company’s request Tuesday, Environmental Code Enforcement officer Shiloh Ring said Wednesday.

The company ceased paper-making operations at the Otis Mill on June 1 does not want to relinquish its environmental permits to continue to market the mill to a buyer, Ring said.

Company representatives have indicated that the mill shut down operations in a “very reasonable and orderly fashion and developed a very detailed list of shutdown activities with a high degree of attention to environmental responsibility,” Ring said.

Plans are in place to continue to methodically work through the environmental checklist through July. Otis requested that the board discontinue all periodic and parameter monitoring, inspections and reporting required under the town permit until such time as the related equipment is started, Ring said.

“We had talked to them about suspending the whole permit, but they wanted to keep the permit active,” she said.

Jonathan Voisine, of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said the state has agreed to temporarily suspend monitoring, including stack testing for the mill, which is shut down. The permit requires the mill to do stack testing for air emissions twice a year. The company was scheduled to do it in the fall, Voisine said..

It is expensive and unnecessary to restart the mill to do the testing, since the mill is not operating, he said.
If the mill is started up again, the monitoring and testing would have to be done, he said.

dperry@sunjournal.com