The Infamous Wood-chip Mill

Dateline: 11/02/97

"High-capacity chip mills...have invaded the South and East. With their limitless and indiscriminate appetite for trees, chip mills can consume all the forest within a 75 mile sourcing area, leaving ruined local economies, silted streams, and desecrated landscapes in their wake."

The Dogwood Alliance Web Site, 1997

Portrayed like Hitler and the Blitzkrieg crushing Poland, the wood-chip mill has been credited for its own economic and environmental Blitzkrieg in the United States. The infamous chip mill has been blamed for ruined local economies, desecrated landscapes, and peddling scarce U.S. wood resources on the global pulp market - scary stuff if true.

"Since the mid-1980's, the pulp and paper industry has built more than 130 pulp and paper mills, chip mills and whole log facilities in the Southeast and Midwest. Forestland is clearcut and whole trees as small as 3" in diameter are sent to chip mills and ground into postage-sized chips, which are sent to mills, cooked in caustic chemicals, and turned into pulp and paper" states one Indiana anti-chip mill group.

A petition to the U.S .Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been delivered to the Region IV Office of the Regional Administrator in Atlanta. This petition asks that EPA conduct a study of "cumulative " environmental impacts of chip mill and log loading operations. They ask that the US Army Corp of Engineers review their approval of mill sites on Corp lands and that there be a moratorium on the licensing of any new chip mill in the region. This petition is signed and supported by nearly 150 groups to include The Audubon Society, Emory University, and The Sierra Club.

What is a wood chip? How can this thin 1/2" by 1" piece of wood be making such a fuss?

The Logging and Sawmilling Journal defines a wood chip as a reasonably precise, thin wafer of wood, cut at a precise angle to the grain, at both ends, with both sides corrugated or striated as a result of being split off from the parent wood. This wood chip is then processed.

The chips, with a great deal of surface area exposed, are "cooked" in a liquor and receive steam and chemicals. This process produces usable, manageable fiber along with several by-products that are also very valuable. Paper is the value-added product produced from a chip and even detractors would never give up using paper.

Three Major Arguments

On local economies:

Chip Mill Con: The chip mill has devastated local economies by its limiting and controlling employment using efficient chipping methods that are machine intensive. They can and have contracted out to non-union employees and save on salaries which support the local base. Chip mills are basically lead weights attached to local economic legs.

Chip Mill Pro: The chip mill actually is a major boost to the local economy. First it increases stumpage prices - the price paid for standing timber - and provides a market for material that has historically had market problems. In effect, it virtually opens a new market in some areas. Theoretically, a chip mill is a scavenger mill that uses poor, unusable species for its products (see editor's note).

On encouraging clearcutting:

Chip Mill Con: The chip mill encourages clearcutting on a large number of acres. It is estimated that 1.2 million acres were cleared last year alone to "feed" chip mills in the Southeast. A chip mill would consume nearly 10,000 acres of forest within 75 acres of the mill each year (stats as per the Dogwood Alliance). High-capacity mills will outstrip the forest's ability to regenerate.

Chip Mill Pro: "Clearcutting" is a practice that is superior to a practice called "highgrading". Clearcutting, only one option at a foresters disposal, is designed to start a new forest. Highgrading perpetuates the old "cut out and get out" practice used for 100 years. Highgrading is not a desirable method of supporting any forestry practice and is not encouraged by chip mills.

If a chip mill consumed 10,000 acres (per the Dogwood Alliance) within 75 miles of the mill per year, only two hundredths of a percent of the forest would be clearcut annually. There are over 6 million forested acres within 75 miles of a chip mill in the south. And many of those cleared acres would have proper regeneration methods applied to its future forest.

Professor George Hooper, head of the University of Tennessee Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, says that there should be concerns about environmental consequences of clearcutting and the chip mill. But his observations lead him to believe that we should not be "overly worried" with the immediate situation.

"I believe a market economy is good, and the more competition, the better the price and, hopefully the better our forests will be managed," Dr. Hooper suggests. He goes on to say that for the long haul, a better market for low grade trees means better management of the forest. This results in better water quality, species diversity and quality, and heightened landowner concern for proper forest practices.

On exporting wood chips:

Chip Mill Con: The chip mill operation supports, to a large extent, the export of chips to other parts of the world - particularly the Eastern Rim - Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Too much raw material is leaving the United States for value-added processes in other countries.

A ban on the import and export of whole logs, wood chips, and other "minimally processed" wood should be enacted. Very limited quantities of primary wood product should be allowed to leave the United States.

Chip Mill Pro: Willamette Industries, a company recently under attack for their chipping operations, says that "Our chip mills are built to provide raw materials for our pulp and paper mills which are located in the U.S. Sometimes, when the lumber market is really hot and there are a lot of residual chips available, we might export chips to maintain operations at our chip mills...But our core business is making paper, not exporting chips.

The State Docks in Mobile, Alabama export most of the wood chips leaving the Central Southern United States. Records indicate that they export pulp volumes equal to about 7% of the total Alabama pulp harvest. There is a very small amount of wood chips leaving the United States as compared to total production.

***

Editors Footnote: I am concerned that some chip mills will try to buy materials that should be left to age and make a higher quality tree. Other foresters share this concern. The mill has a responsibility to advise the landowner to continue to grow certain high quality trees when appropriate.

***