http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2008/05/02/news/news04.txt

On Jan 22, Surfrider's Environmental Issues Team (EIT) met with staff from the Oregon Deparment of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to discuss the agency's reconsideration of the NPDES wastewater permit for the Georgia Pacific Pulp Mill in Toledo. The four hour meeting was a follow-up to DEQ's acceptance of Surfrider Central Coast Chapter's 2006 petition to formally reconsider the terms (e.g., monitoring requirements, effluent standards, etc.) of the GP permit. DEQ declined to provide a specific date for completing the permit reconsideration, but emphasized it is a 'high priority' to get it done. DEQ agreed with Surfrider's argument that Marion County landfill leachate is not an appropriate waste stream under this permit, and indicated that their reconsideration document will reflect this (good news!!) Unfortunately, agreement on many of the other issues was harder to come by. Still, DEQ staff indicated their willingness to consider science-based resources provided by Surfrider in the reconsideration process. We are currently working to develop several memos, including recommendations for additional monitoring. The Georgia Pacific mill releases an average of 11 million gallons a day of treated wastewater through an ocean outfall located 3,800 feet off Nye Beach in Newport.

Last winter Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality accepted Newport Chapter's Petition of Reconsideration of the NPDES permit for the Georgia Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill in Toledo, Oregon. Below is a recent update from DEQ....(thins are moving slowly)

We’ve been slowly working on the reconsideration this year, going over their petition point by point and meeting with WQ HQ staff and Larry Knudsen to make sure we’re being consistent with how we respond to their points. Mostly to make sure we’re consistent with how they’ve responded in other lawsuits. We’ve had three meetings and covered all the petitioner’s issues that have program-wide implications such as how we addressed turbidity in the permit. Steve Schnurbusch, the permit writer, has also spent quite a bit of time between those meetings researching their questions. Bottom line is that we have done a lot of work on it that the petitioner’s probably aren’t aware of. We originally told them we’d try to get it all done this year and would put out on public notice any changes we were going to make to the permit. What has slowed us down is that this is also the final year of the big permit push so all the permit writers are pretty loaded with a lot of other permits and we’re fitting this reconsideration in between all that other permitting work. Right now, it looks like we won’t get it all done this year. I just met with Steve and Mark Hamlin again last week on the reconsideration and I decided we’re going to put this work on hold at least through October while we concentrate on getting all the other permits out that we’re obligated to issue this year.



That was a long and complicated answer to a pretty simple question. I hope it makes sense to you. If Charlie wants to give me a call to discuss, don’t hesitate to give him my number.



John J. Ruscigno

Water Quality Manager

Western Region North

503-378-5081

Trailer: Pulp, Poo & Perfection

Monday, March 19, 2007

Trailer: Pulp, Poo & Perfection

This is the trailer to our short documentary about Chilean surfer activists... coming soon in April.

Angel and I have just returned from 7 days in the heartland of Chile: we sought out and found the real human stories documenting pulp, poo and perfection with an HDV camera in hand and many hard questions at heart. Angel is a Chilean camera man/film director/ultra hyper Chilean-who-surfs and we are the ultimate documentary film team: he all noisy friendly extroversion seeking the perfect angle while he cracks up the interviewee; me all profoundly serious introversion seeking righteous rural redemption via the cleanest line, finding the bloody beating heart of the subject matter. On the road and in southern cornfields we met and broke bread - pan amasado - with coastal Mapuche indians, proud right winger cowboys, straight corporate talking heads and anti-system rednecks in the purest of the backwood Chilean rural style: huaso. This is the salt of the earth.

In the deepest south we stayed with Ruperto and his family in front of a tubing 3 foot wave - they hosted us with freshly boiled cow tongue, net-caught congrio, potatoes from the backyard, powdered tea and neighbors falling-down blind-drunk on one Cristal beer. Every day we surfed the dawn patrol - out of bed with moonset and a hot yerba mate, in the cold dark ocean by 7am - and after a hearty post-surf breakfast we set out on the dusty road to film interviews, follow rumours, chase changing landscapes and foggy light swallowing road dust.



In Pichilemu we had surf sessions and great interviews with Chile's homegrown surf star Ramon Navarro, his neighbor Puño (named for his fast fists) and Ramon's 14-year-old cousin Nacho, who's already a big-wave hell man. They spoke about their leading role in the local opposition to a sewage pipeline proposed for downtown Pichilemu's main surfing beach. Heroes! We also filmed the Laguna Petrel, a freshwater body near downtown Pichilemu that's fluorescent green from sewage and chemicals. And its smell is even worse than the photo:



In Constitucion we met fishermen living in front of the town's busy pulp mill located on the beach. The beach stank of chemicals. The fishermen spoke of ocean pollution and we watched as the forestry company's heavy equipment "armored" the beach to protect its pipeline that dumps liquid cellulose waste into the ocean. This is the real state of South America's industrial forestry complex. This is what supplies your office copy machine with cheap, bright white paper. Your favorite magazine exists so cheaply and so massively because of this industry.



Going south we drove through hundreds of thousands of acres of planted Oregon pine and eucalyptus forest on our way to the Nueva Aldea pulp mill. There we met eager public relations executives. They are eager to show us the modern industrial plant they have, and the efforts they're making to work with the local community. But we also met angry local people who are breathing rotten-egg-smelling air everyday thanks to the new mill. Not to mention the hundreds of neighbors who have to put up with 24-hour truck traffic bringing wood, chemicals and construction materials to the mill. We also met Nato, the last man standing between the pulp mill and the ocean. He won't sell his 5 acres of land to the company for its underground waste pipeline. The wood company will eventually wear down this last humane holdout with their corporate "gifts", or they will reroute their pipeline through other purchased acreage.



Stay tuned for our documentary movie "Pulp, Poo and Perfection" starring reality of Chile and produced by Save the Waves Coalition ...coming soon.

Pulp, Poo & Perfection
Director: Angel Marin
Original Music: Rodrigo Sanchez
Writer & Producer: Josh Berry
Executive Producer: Save the Waves Coalition

Legal challenge to pulp mill

SUE NEALES
Chief reporter

May 18, 2007 12:00am

Article from:

Font size: + -

Send this article: Print Email

A LEGAL challenge by environmental groups could scuttle Gunns' controversial $1.5 billion pulp mill.

The Wilderness Society has launched Federal Court action to halt the Federal Government's environmental assessment of the planned pulp mill project near Launceston.

If Federal Government approval for the Bell Bay pulp mill is delayed beyond August by the legal challenge, Gunns has indicated its proposal could be axed.

The landmark legal action, filed yesterday morning in Hobart's Federal Court, names Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Gunns as respondents to the case.

The Wilderness Society sees the legal case as equal in environmental importance to Australia as earlier historic campaigns to stop the Franklin River from being dammed and Lake Pedder from being flooded.

It will seek an interim injunction on May 31 to suspend the Government's assessment of the pulp mill project under federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation laws from proceeding or its final decision being announced.

The Wilderness Society's Tasmanian campaign manager, Geoff Law, says the "fast-track" and narrow federal assessment of the Gunns pulp mill announced by Mr Turnbull two weeks ago breaks national environmental laws.

Mr Turnbull and Gunns executive chairman John Gay declined to comment yesterday.

But federal Forestry Minister Eric Abetz labelled it a damaging and cynical action that could jeopardise Tasmania's biggest investment project.

The federal inquiry confines the scope of the Commonwealth assessment of the mill's environmental impact to any threatened species living or growing on the mill site, migratory birds and the marine environment of Bass Strait.

Mr Law said it was a disgrace the Government would not review the impact of the pulp mill _ which will consume more than four million tonnes of wood a year _ on Tasmania's native forests, forest wildlife and water resources.

Most of the timber for the pulp mill in at least its first five years of operation will be logged from Tasmania's native forests, mainly in the northeast of the state.

"We are not going to sit back and allow that to occur; we expected better of Mr Turnbull," Mr Law said.

"We believe national environmental laws do not allow that situation to arise where the massive appetite of this pulp mill for forests is not taken into account."

Gunns counters that within eight years 80 per cent of timber to be pulped will come from plantations.

The Government has said it does not need to consider the pulp mill's impact on native forests because forestry activities are exempt from national environmental laws under the Regional Forests Agreement Act.

But the Wilderness Society believes the December 2006 Wielangta forest court ruling, that all forestry operations must consider endangered species, casts doubt on the assumption made by Mr Turnbull and his department that forest impact does not need to be included in its pulp mill assessment process.

In legal documents lodged yesterday, the Wilderness Society also contends it is illegal for a developer such as Gunns to reject an approved independent state-federal assessment process such as the former Resource Planning and Development Commission one, only to be offered a less rigorous alternative by the Federal Government.

The case is listed for Hobart's Federal Court on May 31 before Justice Shane Marshall, the same judge who ruled in favour of Australian Greens leader Bob Brown in the Wielangta logging case against Forestry Tasmania.

Gunns has previously said that unless its pulp mill is given the green light by August, with construction beginning in September, it will axe the project.

The Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has accepted Surfrider's Petition for Reconsideration on the NPDES permit of the Georgia Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill in Toledo! The Petition presents formal scientific and legal arguments for the agency to strengthen the terms of the permit. In the coming months, DEQ will review the points raised in the Petition, modifiy the terms of the permit they deem necessary, and then issue the permit for a public review and comment process. Specific elements Surfrider is advocating for include: improved scientific monitoring, analysis of treatmentment alternatives, and provision of a smaller mixing zone. DEQ's acceptance of the Petition is huge! GP releases 10 million gallons of wastewater a day off Nye Beach near surf spots, fishery habitat, etc. Thank you to the nearly dozen members of Surfrider's Oregon Environmental Issues Team (scientists, attorneys, permit afficianados, etc) who volunteered their personal time to help pull this document together under a 60 day deadline. Also, major thanks to CRAG and NEDC for providing pro bono support to make this happen. You all ROCK!!

Georgia-Pacific pollution permit to be examined

BETH CASPER Statesman Journal
October 18, 2006

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality will reconsider the pollution permit for Georgia-Pacific’s pulp and paper mill in Toledo, the fifth time in six years the agency has done so.

The permit, renewed in July, regulates the millions of gallons of discharge released daily into the ocean in Newport.

Five environmental groups filed a petition with the agency last month. The DEQ’s decision to further evaluate the permit triggers a likely yearlong period of review and public comment.

“We’re really encouraged that DEQ has accepted our petition and hopeful that this will ultimately lead to a stronger permit to protect water quality on the central coast,” said Pete Stauffer, Oregon Policy Coordinator of Surfrider Foundation, one of the petitioners.

Among the pages of concerns Surfrider raised in the petition, two chief issues are improving monitoring of the water at Nye Beach and identifying treatment alternatives for the waste water coming from the plant.

Tom Picciano of Georgia-Pacific said the mill will continue to operate under the current permit during the review period.

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality officials said some of the petitioners’ concerns stemmed from a lack of clarity in the July permit’s language.

For example, petitioners said the new permit increased the size of the mixing zone, or physical area in which pollution can mix with water before it has to meet water quality standards.

“We know (the permit couldn’t) double the size of the mixing zone without going through review,” said John Ruscigno, the water-quality manager for the Salem office of the state DEQ. “But I can see how (the petitioners) drew that conclusion.”

Since 2000, the agency has agreed to reconsider every industrial water pollution permit that was challenged — a total of about five cases.

bcasper@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 589-6994

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/BUSINESS/310180001&SearchID=73260342037261&GID=w5PvsGwwUvZO523jJ+QpZgQmJJGgpcR89zC/IPkNwsg%3D

I'd like to start by sharing one of my favourite quotes with you:

WE ONLY PRESERVE WHAT WE LOVE

WE ONLY LOVE WHAT WE UNDERSTAND

WE ONLY UNDERSTAND WHAT WE STUDY

The Surfrider Foundation Tasmania is a group of local people who, over the past 2 years, have tried to understand the proposed pulp mill project, and what potential impact it may have on our lives as surfers in Tasmania.

We are a community of knock-around, "normal", every-day people, who have given up thousands of hours of time to study this project. A group of people who have put our lives on hold, contributed our own hard earned money to help fund a comprehensive scientific study into potential impacts of the proposed pulp mill on our north coast beaches.

A pulp mill that proposes to dump billions of litres of industrial effluent into a pristine stretch of coast along Bass Strait, right at one of our premier surf spots.

All this work to raise concerns, ask questions and see specific issues addressed, a process we would have expected to be comprehensive, clear and transparent.

The Surfrider Foundation has never stated it opposes a pulp mill in Tasmania. But standing here today, in front of you, I can say many of our questions and concerns have not been addressed, nor are they likely to be. So, how are we, a community group, able to say we support this project?

It may not surprise many of you that surfers would be passionate about ocean conservation, but it may surprise you that surfers, and the Surfrider Foundation International, already have a long history of conflict with, and legal action against, pulp mills around the world.

In the USA, Canada, and in Chile pulp mills have been found to have polluted the marine environment and caused human health impacts on recreational users of the coastline. Pulp mills that have been forced to change technology and clean up their act.

This has been achieved by community groups no different to our own through the use of global scientific resources energised by a passion and love for the ocean. Through this same network our local Tasmanian branch of Surfrider Foundation Australia has been able to recruit national and international scientists, some of them the best in their field, to help us in our integrated impact submission to the RPDC.

We were looking forward to public hearings. A chance to present our case. A chance to get feedback on our concerns and endevours. Our case outlined valid concerns with the proposed project and its impact on our beaches.

Where do we go from here under this new assessment project?

We have heard a lot of new information today. But if I could leave you to ponder two points that I think are of critical importance in this debate:

The RPDC process was not just a project assessment exercise, it was also about community inclusion in the planning of the proposed project. Many of those writing submissions had valid concerns that, if addressed in a fair manner, may have led to community support for the project. Due to a perceived failure in that regard, now there is only suspicion and community anger. Without community support, especially local community support, I can't fathom that this project will have long term viability. Cutting off the RPDC process and public hearings has sent a clear message on future community involvement.

Secondly, the marine environment, as I have found out in my journey, is an extremely complex ecosystem. It is one one piece of this jig saw puzzle. I'm no scientist but I've put in the hours trying to understand this project, and I fail to see how anyone, especially our local government and federal representatives, can make an informed decisions on this project unless they put in the same amount of time trying to understand. They are after all just people like our bunch of surfers.

What can you do to help address such concerns?

Don't stop at writing letters. Read widely on all the issues and concerns surrounding the pulp mill. Go beyond gathering knowledge from your local newspapers, phone a University and harness an academic. If you take the time to understand the issues in your own words, then you are in a better position to inform and lobby our politicians to do the same!

Putting the Surfrider Foundation perspective aside, I'd just like to finish today by taking the chance to say, that I personally wear many hats in this pulp mill debate. I moved back to Tasmania to invest in a in a different and unique lifestyle with my children... like many of you here today. I teach students at university, the future leaders of tomorrow, to apply rigorous analysis to the world in which they live. And I ,of course, want to surf clean oceans and this beautiful wild coast.

I'd like to say that although I wear these many hats, I don't wear any masks! I'm happy to speak up today of the things of which I'm proud. Don't be intimidated by this change of process, speak up and get involved in making sure your vision of Tasmania is also seen (and heard) by those who represent you.

Thank you.

To view photos from the Tazmania Town Hall Meeting go to:

http://www.surfrider.org.au/initiatives/activism/07_tas_pulp_mill_rally.php

Edited version of a speech by Peter Whish-Wilson, President Surfrider Foundation Australia Northern Tasmania. Delivered at the Albert Hall, in the north of Tasmania.

April 2007

Contact: Peter Whish-Wilson 0410 754 728, pwhish-w@bigpond.net.au

by Joshua Berry
Chile Program Director, Save the Waves Coalition
www.savethewaves.org
www.proplaya.cl

Tom and I are at the Nueva Aldea pulp mill for a tour. Tom is a surfer from the United Kingdom who is an expert in large factories and their engineering. He's here on a round-the-world trip and offered his services to Save the Waves Coalition. We enter the executive offices of Nueva Aldea and are greeted by a public relations lady in a conference room dominated by a giant wooden table with fresh bottled water, coffee, tea and cookies. The floor-to-ceiling windows look out on a neighboring vineyard and a perfectly manicured lawn. Ivan the plant's public relations manager greets us with two engineers in tow: the engineer responsible for the mill's effluent discharge into the Itata River, and the engineer who oversees for the construction of the mill's 50-kilometer pipeline being built to the sea.

I immediately tell them that I am an environmental activist with Save the Waves and Proplaya and that we are totally against the construction of the pipeline to the sea. I recount our street protests in Santiago in front of Celco's offices, and of the protests in June in front of this very mill. They laugh nervously yet are relaxed, with only a little political tension in the air! I see a digital projector, a laptop and lots of fancy paper folders with well-lit glossy photos of trees and happy kids and brand-new industrial equipment. Next I warn them that we must keep the office presentation to a minimum and what we really want to do is go out "en terreno" and see the mill operations firsthand. After 20 minutes of slides and conversation we finally get our wish and they take us outside where we put on white hardhats, steel-toed boots and safety glasses. Ours and our hosts' hardhats are white; Tom notes that the workers doing the physical labor are all wearing blue or green hardhats.

During the office presentation I learn some useful details that I did not know before: this mill produces plywood from pine trees and construction-grade lumber from pine trees (mostly 2x4 and 4x4 beams), in addition to Kraft paper pulp from eucalyptus. Part of the solid waste produced in the manufacturing process is burned as biomass and used as energy - the mill is entirely energy efficient and sometimes sells excess electricity back to the grid. The rest of the solid waste is dumped at a nearby "certified" landfill. I'd like to analyse that waste for its ingredients, and see the conditions of the dump. The mill's main client for all of these products is China. The United States and Europe are other major buyers, including the world's largest manufacturer of wooden pallets for shipping and storage. In China, much of the lumber is used for manufacturing furniture which is then sold to the United States, Asia and Europe. The Kraft paper pulp is used to manufacture high-quality white paper products such as office paper, magazine paper, sanitary products and high-quality packaging.

Our first stop "en terreno" is a water treatment facility. It is giant: at least four city blocks of holding tanks, treatment tanks, concrete, giant steel pipes and other equipment. Stinking dark-brown foamy water is sent from the production facilities to this place where it passes through a cooling tower (to be cooled down from 35 degrees Celcius) and enters three treatment processes including filtering, settling and bacterial digestion of certain solids and chemicals. This plant reeks of sulfur and other chemicals that are used in the cleaning process. After 15 minutes my stomach aches and my eyes are beginning to burn. Our hosts tell us that the latest technology eliminates most of the odors associated with the production and waste treatment, but I'm definitely smelling some horrible smells.

As we follow the water treatment process the water gets cleaner and less stinky. At the end of the line, before the water goes into the 1.4-meter-diameter pipeline to the river, the water is clear and odorless. They offer us a cupful but we decline. I'm not very thirsty. I ask the plant's environmental manager if this water is similar to the water in a swimming pool. He smiles and says, yes, it is just like swimming pool water. I comment that one doesn't see fish, river life or sea lions swimming and living in swimming pool water. He agrees with me with a "yes, that's true...", but stumbles to add that such creatures "often live in water much dirtier." OK, Mr. Expert.

We then drive the length of the underground pipeline that's now dumping this water into the river. Or at least that's what they tell me, because I can't exactly see it under 10 feet of dirt. At the river's edge we encounter a giant hole in the ground with a grate over it and a ladder leading down into it, just like the grates you walk over on city sidewalks that ventilate the underground subway. At the bottom of this is a small river of water that then goes out into the middle of the river via another big pipe. The 50-km pipeline is being constructed from this point towards the ocean, on an old railroad right-of-way. 50-meter lengths of giant black HDPE pipe lie on the ground in perfect piles waiting for installation to lead to our ocean.

Stay tuned for our educated analysis of this visit and of the private and government reports on the water treatment facility and the pipeline!

My visit and tour of the offending pulp mill
by Joshua Berry, Chile Program Director, Save the Waves Coalition

Tuesday, November 21, 2006.

The train ride out of Santiago is gorgeous but not very fast. As I sit in my seat I watch skyscraping Andes mountains as a vertical wall to my left; in the foreground are vineyards, small snowmelt rivers, giant monoculture agricultural fields dotted with roaming horses; the distant coastal mountains to my right contain the millions of acres of Oregon pine and Australian eucalyptus that feed Chile's infamous forestry industry. At 7 AM the train is full of affluent agricultural engineers and winemakers talking on their cell phones as they travel to their fields from Santiago for the day. These guys are the scientists and managers behind the mass-produced wines, table grapes, oranges, tomatos, apples and asparagus that arrive jet-set fresh to your local supermarket during the northern hemisphere winter. Their prime export season is just now beginning.

But this is not a tourist brochure nor an article for Travel & Leisure; I've watched this gorgeous landscape pass by at 80 KPH a thousand times before; today I meet my nemesis, "Complejo Forestal e Industrial Nueva Aldea" (Nueva Aldea Forestry and Industrial Complex): a US$1.3 billion-dollar city of industry built to produce what we all want more of: bleached paper kraft pulp, cheap lumber and plywood. And your newspaper, office fax, surf magazine or bathroom remodel will soon contain some product from this very place. Chile's trees grow three times faster than the same tree grown in North America. Who can argue that they don't have the right to produce such a much-needed product?

Five hours later after getting off the train I get in a car and drive another 50 km southwest to what was once a small rural village. Now the village has a rather large new neighbor that is constantly lit up with 300 giant floodlights and 200-foot-tall vapor-spewing smokestacks. Vineyards still border the edges of the pulp factory. One of them is an organic vineyard, and this year 80,000 bottles of its wine was rejected by Swedish authorities because of its proximity to the new pulp mill.

I approach the heavily guarded gates (site of many citizen protests, including a Greenpeace stunt in late June of this year in which four climber activists, one of them a surfer, hung a giant banner reading, CELCO: ENOUGH POLLUTION ALREADY) and I announce my name to the rent-a-cop. This time I am not holding a protest placard; this time I am an invited guest of the Plant Manager and the guard waves me through with subservient authority. What rhetoric will I be showered me with today? How will the beast be painted by its human custodians? I suspect the "local jobs and economy" argument will be heavily promoted. I merely have a few pointed questions to ask, and a strange desire to stare deeply into that chlorine- and sulfur-spewing cauldron of industrial ingenuity. Some people come to Chile to walk for days to stare into sulfur- and toxin-spewing volcanoes. Is my journey today that much different? Ultimately I seek self-knowledge and redemption, and getting to know my enemy helps tremendously in getting to know myself. Today I am the lotus flower: growing in mud yet undefiled by it.

Next blog: the public relations slide show and the very stinky water treatment plant...

Visit www.savethewaves.org and www.proplaya.cl for further information and photos of our Chile project.

“The ocean has an infinite capacity to absorb our industrial waste.” – Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile, February 2005, Santiago, Chile.

“It’s very likely that local people will die to keep Celco from building their pipeline into the ocean. We the local fishermen are passionate and organized against this pipeline and we will sacrifice our lives to protect our future and our environment. This is my life and I support my children and my wife from what the ocean gives me – without the health of the ocean and its fauna, I am dead already; I promise that I will not sell out the health of this ocean to the toxic and corrupt paper industry.” – Gino, fisherman & artisan fishing community organizer; July 2006, Mehuin, southern Chile.

There is a ten-year recipe for social action in Mehuin, Chile. In Valdivia, the site of a Celco pulp mill pollution scandal in 2005, Celco plans on building a 50-mile-long overland pipeline to dump its pulp waste directly into the Pacific Ocean near Mehuin. The local fishermen are up in arms, and since 1996 they have done something about it. Before I delve into a brief history of the unfolding drama, allow me to quote some of the news headlines from last week’s confrontation between Celco (who attempted to map the ocean floor site), the Chilean navy (who attempted to protect Celco from the local fishermen), and 40 local fishing boats (who successfully harassed Celco and the navy into leaving without gathering their ocean floor contour data).

“The Southern Ocean’s Secret War” – Diario El Gong, July 27, 2006.
“Celco Fails in EIR Bid After Fishermen’s Actions” – Diario El Gong, July 26, 2006.
“Neighbors Question Government’s Support of Celco” – Koala Web, July 26, 2006.
“Navy Launches Warship to Protect Celco Scientists” – Diario del Sur, July 26, 2006.
“Navy Defends Actions and Claims to Not Protect Celco” – Diaria del Sur, July 26, 2006.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVENTS: In 1996, Celco seemed to understand that its pulp mill would irreversibly pollute the Rio Cruces / Valdivia watershed because they got approval to build a pipeline to dump their waste into the coastal waters of Mehuin, a small artisan fishing community near Valdivia. The “Ocean Defense Committee” was formed by local fishermen to stop this project; they protested via massive demonstrations, burning 3 police motorcycles and one paddy wagon and succeeding in tabling the pipeline proposal. Ricardo Lagos, president of Chile until 2006, reinitiated the subject in 2005 claiming that “a waste pipeline to the ocean is the only solution, since the ocean has an infinite capacity to absorb industrial waste.”

After the green light from the president of Chile, Celco reinitiated its geographic studies of the region for the construction of its pipeline. The fishermen of Mehuin followed closely, and in December 2005 shots were fired across the bow of a Celco boat by local fishermen as scientists attempted to take depth soundings, ocean bottom contours and water samples. Celco fled the scene without achieving its aims, but returned last week with an escort: a warship from the Chilean navy. Dozens of riot police descended on the small town of Mehuin to control the situation and electrical power to the town was cut.

Nevertheless, over 40 small fishing boats congregated at the scene in heavy seas and torrential rains; they harassed the Celco and navy boats to such an extent that Celco and the navy again left the scene without succeeding at collecting their data.

That old curse, “may you live in interesting times” seems to be evident here.