Crofton couple part of high-tech project to identify odours coming from the
Catalyst pulp and paper mill.
Ladysmith Chronicle
Feb 07 2006
After 40 years of fighting for tighter pollution controls on the Crofton
pulp mill, Bill Bonsall is helping the mill on a year-long project to sniff
out errant fumes.
The cool breeze blowing across the Bonsall family farm north of the Crofton
pulp mill is free of any foul smells today, but all too often that isn't the
case.
Last year Bill and Maxine Bonsall recorded more than 100 days of stink
leaching into their house, sometimes causing headaches and sleepless nights.
With neat handwriting, Maxine logged the details of every odorous encounter
- from "rotten" to "horrific" to "very putrid."
"Sometimes it's sulphurous, sometimes it's a sour smell," Maxine says. "In
the summer it can last 14 hours. It's not very nice."
The Bonsalls have had a cantankerous relationship with the mill since it
started producing pulp and paper in the late 1950s as B.C. Forest Products.
Bill says poisonous effluent spilled into nearby marshland, killing off his
cattle in the 1960s, and permanently fouling the Chemainus River estuary.
"It's 120 acres of wasteland now," Bill said bitterly of the wide swath of
low-lying fields settled by his family in 1873. "This has been an ongoing
fight since 1957. I was a farmer until they polluted me right out of
business."
Despite the hard words, Bill says in the past few years tension with the
mill has eased. The Bonsalls are now part of a year-long Catalyst Paper
Corp. research project to zero in on fugitive smells escaping mill
equipment.
"It's the first time in 48 years anyone from the mill has come to talk with
us," said Bill, 74, who called the current batch of Catalyst Paper
management a "decent group".
Don McKendrick, Catalyst's Crofton division vice president, said it is
difficult to identify every mill operation that generates sulphur compounds,
called TRS, and how much is released into the air. "It is hard to calculate
how much a particular source contributes, it varies quite a bit," McKendrick
said. "We think from the direction it might be specific sources from the
mill. It could be venting, it could be clarifiers. At the end of the year we
could pinpoint another source."
A sophisticated ambient air monitoring station on loan from the Pulp and
Paper Research Institute of Canada, and three other monitoring stations
south of Crofton will log the concentration of ambient TRS, particulate
matter and wind direction.
The mill has added $13 million of equipment in the past five years to
incinerate errant gasses, cutting odorous fumes by more than 70 per cent,
according mill environmental officers.
Since the Bonsalls' data is largely anecdotal, McKendrick suggested it will
have less weight than station data. "Because they [Bonsalls] are to the
north, it is another directional base," McKendrick said.
The Bonsall's say they appreciate Catalyst's cleanup efforts, but they would
like to see the provincial government strengthen its environmental laws.
Bill said the government issues pollutant discharge permits without
monitoring the impact on the water, air and land.
"The mill is a major employer, but we've got to save what environment we've
got left," Bill said. "The birds are gone, the estuary is destroyed. This
place is a mess."
Cowichan-Ladysmith MLA Doug Routley, who recently visited the Bonsall farm,
said environmental protection is "high on the NDP radar," but cautioned
against finger pointing at the Catalyst Paper mill. "The legacy of
industrial pollution needs to be dealt with," Routley said.
"But we need to acknowledge the huge strides taken by Norske and Catalyst in
reducing waste and increasing efficiency."
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