Paper and pulp industry in Dryden, Ontario
Encyclopedia
The paper and pulp industry in Dryden, Ontario, which began in the early 1900s, resulted in a significant environmental issue through the dumping of mercury by a paper mill into local waters.
s operating in the Dryden, Ontario
area. They primarily supplied the builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR) with railway timber
, and powered the many steam boilers used for mining
in that area. In 1909, Charles and Grant Gordon began the construction of a paper mill
on the west side of the Wabigoon River
, where a paper mill is currently located. The mill's location has some advantages, because it has an abundant electricity supply from the river and a plentiful supply of wood. It also happened to be 130 kilometers upstream from the Grassy Narrows traditional area.
In 1911, the rights of the timber lease were transferred from the Gordon brothers to the Dryden Timber and Power Company because the building they were constructing burned down in 1910, and they did not have means to complete their project. Dryden Timber and Power Company constructed a new mill and started to operate in 1913; it was the first Kraft pulp mill in Northwestern Ontario
. Power chain saws, safety pants and safety gloves were introduced with the ownership of Dryden Paper Company in the early 1960s, resulting in a tremendous increase in productivity for the logger
s.
Afterward, the ownership of the mill changed several times. Ownership was transferred from Weyerhaeuser
to Domtar
(its present owner) in March 2007 for approximately US$520 million. It has an annual pulp production capacity of 319,000 tonne
s in 1 pulp line.
Dryden Chemicals Ltd, which was a subsidiary of the British multinational, Reed International company, used mercury
cells in sodium chloride
electrolysis
to make caustic soda and chlorine
for bleaching paper, and they dumped their 10 tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River between 1962 and 1970. The English-Wabigoon River served as a source of a food and drinking water, and was also a contributor to the local economy as a fishery
and guiding.
By 1970, the English-Wabigoon River was polluted with chemical waste
, and the pollution spread to the Winnipeg River
and eventually to Lake Winnipeg
. As a result, the people of Grassy Narrows and White Dogs were negatively affected and suffered from mercury poisoning
, one variant of which is called Minamata disease
(it originally occurred in Japan in the Minamata Bay
area during 1952–60).
About 850 First Nations
people were living on the two reserves
when the mercury issue arose, and they were told to stop eating fish and drinking water. Also, the commercial fishery and fishing guides services were forced to close, resulting in mass unemployment in the community. Furthermore, “the impact of the mercury poisoning on the local economy had not received attention for a long time.” And the Ontario government did not address the issue for a long time.
The Ontario
government warned the First Nation residents to stop eating fish, which is their main staple food
, and closed down their commercial fishery in November 1970. Even though the hair and blood samples of people in Grassy Narrows and White Dog showed that the blood mercury levels exceeded the level considered safe for humans, the Canadian federal government denied the occurrence of Minamata disease and insisted that no serious typical cases were found in those regions. Even a 1971 provincial report suggested that the mercury might have occurred naturally because of its chemical property.
The definition of Minamata disease was not clear at the time, and the level of contamination in Japan’s case of Minamata disease was much more serious and lethal than the ones in Canada. Also, the symptoms of Minamata disease are similar to alcoholic inebriation, including loss of coordination and concentration and body tremors. Public awareness of the problem grew during the 1970s. The federal government paid $4.4 million ($ today) to Grassy Narrows for social service and economic development on July 27, 1984. The federal government has paid more than $9 million for compensation to the First Nations affected by the mercury contamination.
While mercury dumping was discontinued, increased erosion
from logging allowed naturally occurring methylmercury
from the soil to enter the watershed
. In 2003 researchers returned to Grassy Narrows and found seriously elevated levels of mercury among band members. Band members and environmental activists began manning a blockade on the main logging roads.
On April 2, 2009, Domtar Corporation announced that it would idle its Dryden pulp making mills for approximately ten weeks starting April 25, 2009 due to the lack of global demand for pulp. As a result, 230 workers have been off work since the mill closed. However, mill employees working in Dryden began slowly returning to work at Domtar’s pulp mill in July 2009.
History
During the late 1890s, there were several sawmillSawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
s operating in the Dryden, Ontario
Dryden, Ontario
Dryden is the second-largest city in the Kenora District of Northwestern Ontario, Canada, located on Wabigoon Lake. It is the smallest community in the province of Ontario designated as a city...
area. They primarily supplied the builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...
(CPR) with railway timber
Timber
Timber may refer to:* Timber, a term common in the United Kingdom and Australia for wood materials * Timber, Oregon, an unincorporated community in the U.S...
, and powered the many steam boilers used for mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
in that area. In 1909, Charles and Grant Gordon began the construction of a paper mill
Paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine or other type of paper machine.- History :...
on the west side of the Wabigoon River
Wabigoon River
The Wabigoon River is a river in Kenora District in northwestern Ontario, Canada. It flows from Raleigh Lake past Dryden, Ontario on Wabigoon Lake to join the English River...
, where a paper mill is currently located. The mill's location has some advantages, because it has an abundant electricity supply from the river and a plentiful supply of wood. It also happened to be 130 kilometers upstream from the Grassy Narrows traditional area.
In 1911, the rights of the timber lease were transferred from the Gordon brothers to the Dryden Timber and Power Company because the building they were constructing burned down in 1910, and they did not have means to complete their project. Dryden Timber and Power Company constructed a new mill and started to operate in 1913; it was the first Kraft pulp mill in Northwestern Ontario
Northwestern Ontario
Northwestern Ontario is the region within the Canadian province of Ontario which lies north and west of Lake Superior, and west of Hudson Bay and James Bay. It includes most of subarctic Ontario. Its western boundary is the Canadian province of Manitoba, which disputed Ontario's claim to the...
. Power chain saws, safety pants and safety gloves were introduced with the ownership of Dryden Paper Company in the early 1960s, resulting in a tremendous increase in productivity for the logger
Logger
Logger may refer to:* Lumberjack, a woodcutter, a person who harvests lumber* Data logging, recording sequential data to a log file* Keystroke logging, recording the keys struck on a keyboard...
s.
Afterward, the ownership of the mill changed several times. Ownership was transferred from Weyerhaeuser
Weyerhaeuser
Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world. It is the world's largest private sector owner of softwood timberland; and the second largest owner of United States timberland, behind Plum Creek Timber...
to Domtar
Domtar
Domtar Corporation is the largest integrated producer of uncoated freesheet paper in North America and the second largest in the world based on production capacity, and is also a manufacturer of papergrade pulp....
(its present owner) in March 2007 for approximately US$520 million. It has an annual pulp production capacity of 319,000 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s in 1 pulp line.
Health effects
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
cells in sodium chloride
Sodium chloride
Sodium chloride, also known as salt, common salt, table salt or halite, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaCl. Sodium chloride is the salt most responsible for the salinity of the ocean and of the extracellular fluid of many multicellular organisms...
electrolysis
Electrolysis
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction...
to make caustic soda and chlorine
Chlorine
Chlorine is the chemical element with atomic number 17 and symbol Cl. It is the second lightest halogen, found in the periodic table in group 17. The element forms diatomic molecules under standard conditions, called dichlorine...
for bleaching paper, and they dumped their 10 tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River between 1962 and 1970. The English-Wabigoon River served as a source of a food and drinking water, and was also a contributor to the local economy as a fishery
Fishery
Generally, a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats,...
and guiding.
By 1970, the English-Wabigoon River was polluted with chemical waste
Chemical waste
Chemical waste is a waste that is made from harmful chemicals . Chemical waste may fall under regulations such as COSHH in the United Kingdom, or the Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in the United States...
, and the pollution spread to the Winnipeg River
Winnipeg River
The Winnipeg River is a Canadian river which flows from Lake of the Woods in the province of Ontario to Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. This river is long from the Norman Dam in Kenora to its mouth at Lake Winnipeg. Its watershed is in area, mainly in Canada. About of this area is in northern...
and eventually to Lake Winnipeg
Lake Winnipeg
Lake Winnipeg is a large, lake in central North America, in the province of Manitoba, Canada, with its southern tip about north of the city of Winnipeg...
. As a result, the people of Grassy Narrows and White Dogs were negatively affected and suffered from mercury poisoning
Mercury poisoning
Mercury poisoning is a disease caused by exposure to mercury or its compounds. Mercury is a heavy metal occurring in several forms, all of which can produce toxic effects in high enough doses...
, one variant of which is called Minamata disease
Minamata disease
', sometimes referred to as , is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death...
(it originally occurred in Japan in the Minamata Bay
Minamata Bay
Minamata is a small factory town. Minamata Bay is a bay on the west coast of Kyūshū island, located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The bay is part of the larger Shiranui Sea which is sandwiched between the coast of the Kyūshū mainland and the off-lying islands of Kumamoto and Nagasaki...
area during 1952–60).
About 850 First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
people were living on the two reserves
Indian reserve
In Canada, an Indian reserve is specified by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." The Act also specifies that land reserved for the use and benefit of a band which is not...
when the mercury issue arose, and they were told to stop eating fish and drinking water. Also, the commercial fishery and fishing guides services were forced to close, resulting in mass unemployment in the community. Furthermore, “the impact of the mercury poisoning on the local economy had not received attention for a long time.” And the Ontario government did not address the issue for a long time.
Company response
Dryden chemical executives repeatedly insisted that mercury occurred naturally in the local environment, and the mill's effluence was not the only source of mercury in the river. However, fish taken from the area of the mill showed much higher levels of mercury than fish from other areas.Government response
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
government warned the First Nation residents to stop eating fish, which is their main staple food
Staple food
A staple food is one that is eaten regularly and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a diet, and that supplies a high proportion of energy and nutrient needs. Most people live on a diet based on one or more staples...
, and closed down their commercial fishery in November 1970. Even though the hair and blood samples of people in Grassy Narrows and White Dog showed that the blood mercury levels exceeded the level considered safe for humans, the Canadian federal government denied the occurrence of Minamata disease and insisted that no serious typical cases were found in those regions. Even a 1971 provincial report suggested that the mercury might have occurred naturally because of its chemical property.
The definition of Minamata disease was not clear at the time, and the level of contamination in Japan’s case of Minamata disease was much more serious and lethal than the ones in Canada. Also, the symptoms of Minamata disease are similar to alcoholic inebriation, including loss of coordination and concentration and body tremors. Public awareness of the problem grew during the 1970s. The federal government paid $4.4 million ($ today) to Grassy Narrows for social service and economic development on July 27, 1984. The federal government has paid more than $9 million for compensation to the First Nations affected by the mercury contamination.
Current status
Since the early 1900s and the opening of the first sawmill in Dryden, the forest industry has played a significant role in the economy of the city. Today, Domtar, the largest integrated producer of uncoated paper in North America and the second-largest in the world in terms of production capacity, owns a pulp manufacturer in Dryden that produces one pulp product called Northern Bleached Softwood Kraft (NBSK). The mill produces 319,000 air dry metric tons of NBSK annually, which is sold on the open market. However, the paper and pulp sector is facing economic deterioration.While mercury dumping was discontinued, increased erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
from logging allowed naturally occurring methylmercury
Methylmercury
Methylmercury is an organometallic cation with the formula . It is a bioaccumulative environmental toxicant.-Structure:...
from the soil to enter the watershed
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
. In 2003 researchers returned to Grassy Narrows and found seriously elevated levels of mercury among band members. Band members and environmental activists began manning a blockade on the main logging roads.
On April 2, 2009, Domtar Corporation announced that it would idle its Dryden pulp making mills for approximately ten weeks starting April 25, 2009 due to the lack of global demand for pulp. As a result, 230 workers have been off work since the mill closed. However, mill employees working in Dryden began slowly returning to work at Domtar’s pulp mill in July 2009.
External links
- Billingsley, R.W., Brief on the state of the Dryden Paper Company and the eastern Canadian pulp and paper industry: presented to Ontario Government Resources Development Policy Field Committee, January 18, 1973, Dryden, Ontario (1973)
- Murray, William, Background Paper—Pulp and Paper: The Reduction of Toxic Effluents, April 1992
- "Mediated Settlement of Environmental Disputes: Grassy Narrows and White Dog Revisited"; West, Leigh, 18 Envtl. L. 131 (1987–88)
- "Biomonitoring in the mercury-contaminated Wabigoon-English-Winnipeg river(Canada) system in fish downstream of a chlor-alkali plant in Dryden, Ontario, Canada ", JW Parks, PJ Craig, BP Neary, G Ozburn, Applied Organometallic Chemistry, 1991
- Microbiological study of a bleached kraft pulp mill aerated lagoon, SN Liss, DG Allen – Journal of Pulp and Paper Science, 1992