“I have heard that in war haste can be folly, but have never seen delay that was wise.” Sun Tzu
Last week, a Sun Paper representative said on a KUAR report that construction of the mill will be delayed at least six months. “They are still trying to nail down some of the issues involving the project and it has taken more time than was expected.”
According to RISI, a pulp and paper industry research firm, “meaningful volumes from Sun are not expected until 2021. This best-case timetable confirms our expected view published in our May 23rd report on fluff pulp. We see this news as likely benefiting International Paper and Domtar, two major fluff pulp producers.”
Living in dangerous times
When you look at the world with extreme temperatures in the Middle East and droughts and wildfires on the West Coast, Arkansas has unique natural advantages, an ideal place to live in a dangerous world. Arkansans, for the most part, ignore the natural benefits and some are determined to sell the best we have, ignoring public health and environmental justice.
It is not too late to stop the fluff. We can choose a green economy, where the growth of income and jobs is driven by investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, increase energy and materials efficiency, and enhance natural capital. Green economies are good for all people, improving human wellbeing and social equity, and decreasing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. The focus is on sustainability, caring for nature, people in need, and justice for all.
Fluff and elephants
Like forests, rivers, and air, elephants are irreplaceable. Elephants are highly intelligent land mammals, they are playful and know how to use tools. Their behavior shows altruism, grief, compassion, and self-awareness. Elephants live in a structured social order. Females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts, led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Like the forests, we have few elephants left. People kill elephants to sell ivory tusks. People harvest forests, polluting rivers and air, to make fluff.
Environmental impact
Initially, the project was a 700,000 tons per year fluff mill to manufacture disposable diapers in China. Now, the bioproducts, pollution, and technologies of the mill are unknown.
The total carbon footprint of this project includes the GHG emissions from the Sun mill plus the GHG from harvesting the forests, the lost carbon sink from the forests, the 400 40-ton log trucks making daily deliveries on state roads, a new intermodal train station to ship containers to China, and trainloads to shipping ports.
The Ouachita River pollution, upstream from the Koch Crossett G-P mill, will have a massive cumulative negative public health impact in Arkansas and Louisiana. The ongoing investigation at the G-P mill on the crud coming from the mill should be reason enough to stop the Sun mill. EPA Environmental Justice opposes environmental discrimination to protect all people.
Mill size matters. Sun has wood pulp mills from 100,000 to 300,000 tons per year. At 700,000 tons of fluff per year, their Arkansas mill would be the largest in the U.S. The round wood feedstock, the millions of gallons of daily clean water, and the millions of gallons of wastewater pollution, plus the CO2 GHG and the wood smoke PM-2.5 emissions, are all proportional to the size of the mill.
Why would Arkansans provide aid to China when Sun has not disclosed their kraft fluff and bleaching technology? Why would we trust Sun’s unsubstantiated claims of environmental and technological excellence?
The total cost of luring Chairman Li, around $300 million, is ignored by the Arkansas Economic Development Commission as if closing the deal is the only thing that matters. AEDC should conduct an independent due diligence study to show the net benefits.
Buddha once said, “Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, the Moon, and the Truth.” AEDC needs to tell the whole truth about this massive and destructive extraction project.
Dr. Luis Contreras
Foresters lump hardwoods, oaks, pine trees and all else as timber. Saying that in “2010-14, Arkansas had 41.6 million tons and harvested 24.8 million tons and the annual surplus had grown to 16.8 million tons,” is worthless. Fluff mills and paper mills use selected types of trees and buy from nearby forests to avoid trucking costs. Type, age, location, and quality of the available wood is what mills look for, not tons of timber.
While the rest of the world is rapidly planting billions of trees of various types to have a resilient biodiversity, hoping to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere before it is too late, Arkansas foresters ignore the true value of the forests and the threats of abrupt climate change. All they see is green, $$$.
Forest owners need to be compensated for the services and benefits they provide. Forest Carbon Offsets or even federal subsidies should be used to keep trees standing.
Someone asked me: But we have surplus timber, why not sell it?
The Arkansas Forestry Commission and other foresters claim Arkansas has a glut of timber: “The supply is just huge and it’s going to take us a while to chew through it,” said Matthew Pelkki, who holds the George H. Clippert Endowed Chair of Forest Economics at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. “It’s a manageable problem, but we’re sitting on a powder keg.”
I don’t know Pelkki but he has a limited view of the forests. He may be talking about tree farms, but even pine plantations have trees, with 350 million years’ experience in sequestering carbon. In natural forests, the forest soil, a complex ecosystem, is invaluable, storing carbon and filtering rainwater.
El Dorado, AR, was one of the sites bidding for the mill. The News-Times report, December 11, 2015, “El Dorado City Council eyes pulp mill package” says local business leaders opposed giving Sun the funds AEDC was requesting, the low-paying jobs, and the pollution of the Ouachita River:
Richard Mason expressed concern about air and water pollution, adding, “This is a bad deal. You don’t need those jobs in El Dorado. You need quality jobs, and those jobs are the lowest of the low.” Local attorney Matt Thomas raised questions about the environmental impact on the Ouachita River and said the project is sure to attract lawsuits. “You remember what happened the last time we went down this road. I don’t think this project will get off the ground because of litigation,” Thomas told board members. “If you want to throw money on the front end, I think you’re wasting your money.”
Please read the full article, it explains why El Dorado dropped the project. Arkadelphia should do the same.
Shandong Sun is not investing in Arkansas. Sun wants to build a mill to make fluff and ship it to China. They have polluted the air, the rivers and have no forests: they can’t build a fluff mill in China.
The mill would be fully owned by Sun. All the benefits are for China. Clark County gets the pollution, road congestion, and deforestation.
If Sun was building a university, a training center, hotels, or even a Chinese restaurant, then you could say Sun is investing in Arkansas, and Arkansans would benefit from Sun’s investment.
Sun is not creating 250 jobs paying $52,000 per year for Arkansas. All we get is some dead end jobs, here is why:
Fluff mills run around the clock with several shifts, requiring many Chinese managers and supervisors. The 250 mill jobs include the Chinese staff. According to CNN-Money, July 21, 2016, “Chinese flock to America to work for companies they own.” The U.S. granted 10,258 L-series visas to Chinese workers and their family members in 2015, more than four times the number approved in 2005.
The $52,000 average wage, stated in the MoU, is a meaningless number used by AEDC to deceive the public.
Chinese managers will have high salaries and benefits. Arkansans will get the remaining low-pay jobs with no union or benefits.
AEDC is in violation of Arkansas rules. Sun does not qualify for the AEDC Create Rebate funds.
The Create Rebate Program is an incentive Arkansas reserves for projects that bring quality jobs to communities. The Rebate program provides a cash rebate on a percentage of qualified payroll, paid with our taxes.
You may be wondering where the $300 million estimate comes from. AEDC refuses to comment and it may be possible they don’t really know, all they wanted was to make a deal at any cost.
Mill size matters. At 700,000 tons of fluff per year, the Sun mill would be the largest in the U.S. The mill would use 4 million tons of round wood as feedstock per year, with 400 40-ton log trucks making daily deliveries on state roads. Logging trucks will create safety hazards and will tear down country roads: a 40-ton logging truck causes the same damage as 10,000 midsize cars.
Who pays for road repairs and road maintenance? This and ALL other external costs are real and directly due to the Sun mill. The total is around $300 million, to be paid with our taxes.
AEDC is inflating the benefits and dismissing the costs of the mill to justify this fiasco. Instead of doing a due diligence study and an Environmental Impact analysis, Mike Preston gets $50,000 bonus.
If you don’t like what AEDC is doing, call Mike Preston.