Paper manufacturing facilities often contaminate the marine sediment and upland soil near waterways with petroleum-based compounds, dioxins/furans, PCBs, metals, and wood waste.

In one Washington area the state legislature and State Governor, created the Puget Sound initiative to restore Puget Sound from the massive contaminants found in the waterway from papermill runoff.

Dredging Puget sound restored the shoreline and contributed significantly to the Port’s environmental stewardship efforts within Fidalgo Bay. The dredging of Puget sound returned a popular section of the waterfront to safe public use.

Is your paper mill in need of dredging to not only keep the mill in superior working order but to protect the soil and waterways nearby as well?

Dredging your paper mill involves major excavation of the soil along the shorelines anywhere near a papermill as well as dredging of the sediments inside the harbor line to remove contaminated material left by the mill. Some dredging activity takes place at night due to the ideal high tide, and the dredged material is taken to an approved open water disposal site.

Specific to each papermill, holding influent or effluent and associated solids for too long of a time generally causes not only detrimental septic issues, which generate foul odors, but also results in low D.O. conditions which cause bacteria to generate specific organic compounds that include sulfides and organic acids.

Your papermill’s holding times of influent material should always be kept to a minimum. Aside from odor, generation of septic conditions can cause contribution to ashing within the clarifier, because the solids are turning anaerobic at the bottom of your clarifier and are generating gases that cause clumps of solids to float to the top. This results in an increase in solids carryover. Conditions like these usually lead to the excessive growth and levels of filaments further on into the aerobic biological portion of the system.

Often times, in paper mills, anaerobic sludge is sent to the primary clarifier using the belt press supernatant. This method also leads to an increase in septic conditions in primary clarifier, because you are seeding bacteria likely to grow in facultative and anaerobic conditions into the system.

Almost every time we have papermill dredging projects, they have SBR’s (Sequencing Batch Reactors) or lagoons. Both are notorious for holding solids too long, leading to filamentous problems.

Utilizing dredging to optimize your EQ tanks can make a huge impact on how much electricity you need based on your loading and factors of septicity.