Trailer: Pulp, Poo & Perfection

Monday, March 19, 2007

Trailer: Pulp, Poo & Perfection

This is the trailer to our short documentary about Chilean surfer activists... coming soon in April.

Angel and I have just returned from 7 days in the heartland of Chile: we sought out and found the real human stories documenting pulp, poo and perfection with an HDV camera in hand and many hard questions at heart. Angel is a Chilean camera man/film director/ultra hyper Chilean-who-surfs and we are the ultimate documentary film team: he all noisy friendly extroversion seeking the perfect angle while he cracks up the interviewee; me all profoundly serious introversion seeking righteous rural redemption via the cleanest line, finding the bloody beating heart of the subject matter. On the road and in southern cornfields we met and broke bread - pan amasado - with coastal Mapuche indians, proud right winger cowboys, straight corporate talking heads and anti-system rednecks in the purest of the backwood Chilean rural style: huaso. This is the salt of the earth.

In the deepest south we stayed with Ruperto and his family in front of a tubing 3 foot wave - they hosted us with freshly boiled cow tongue, net-caught congrio, potatoes from the backyard, powdered tea and neighbors falling-down blind-drunk on one Cristal beer. Every day we surfed the dawn patrol - out of bed with moonset and a hot yerba mate, in the cold dark ocean by 7am - and after a hearty post-surf breakfast we set out on the dusty road to film interviews, follow rumours, chase changing landscapes and foggy light swallowing road dust.



In Pichilemu we had surf sessions and great interviews with Chile's homegrown surf star Ramon Navarro, his neighbor Puño (named for his fast fists) and Ramon's 14-year-old cousin Nacho, who's already a big-wave hell man. They spoke about their leading role in the local opposition to a sewage pipeline proposed for downtown Pichilemu's main surfing beach. Heroes! We also filmed the Laguna Petrel, a freshwater body near downtown Pichilemu that's fluorescent green from sewage and chemicals. And its smell is even worse than the photo:



In Constitucion we met fishermen living in front of the town's busy pulp mill located on the beach. The beach stank of chemicals. The fishermen spoke of ocean pollution and we watched as the forestry company's heavy equipment "armored" the beach to protect its pipeline that dumps liquid cellulose waste into the ocean. This is the real state of South America's industrial forestry complex. This is what supplies your office copy machine with cheap, bright white paper. Your favorite magazine exists so cheaply and so massively because of this industry.



Going south we drove through hundreds of thousands of acres of planted Oregon pine and eucalyptus forest on our way to the Nueva Aldea pulp mill. There we met eager public relations executives. They are eager to show us the modern industrial plant they have, and the efforts they're making to work with the local community. But we also met angry local people who are breathing rotten-egg-smelling air everyday thanks to the new mill. Not to mention the hundreds of neighbors who have to put up with 24-hour truck traffic bringing wood, chemicals and construction materials to the mill. We also met Nato, the last man standing between the pulp mill and the ocean. He won't sell his 5 acres of land to the company for its underground waste pipeline. The wood company will eventually wear down this last humane holdout with their corporate "gifts", or they will reroute their pipeline through other purchased acreage.



Stay tuned for our documentary movie "Pulp, Poo and Perfection" starring reality of Chile and produced by Save the Waves Coalition ...coming soon.

Pulp, Poo & Perfection
Director: Angel Marin
Original Music: Rodrigo Sanchez
Writer & Producer: Josh Berry
Executive Producer: Save the Waves Coalition

Legal challenge to pulp mill

SUE NEALES
Chief reporter

May 18, 2007 12:00am

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A LEGAL challenge by environmental groups could scuttle Gunns' controversial $1.5 billion pulp mill.

The Wilderness Society has launched Federal Court action to halt the Federal Government's environmental assessment of the planned pulp mill project near Launceston.

If Federal Government approval for the Bell Bay pulp mill is delayed beyond August by the legal challenge, Gunns has indicated its proposal could be axed.

The landmark legal action, filed yesterday morning in Hobart's Federal Court, names Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Gunns as respondents to the case.

The Wilderness Society sees the legal case as equal in environmental importance to Australia as earlier historic campaigns to stop the Franklin River from being dammed and Lake Pedder from being flooded.

It will seek an interim injunction on May 31 to suspend the Government's assessment of the pulp mill project under federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation laws from proceeding or its final decision being announced.

The Wilderness Society's Tasmanian campaign manager, Geoff Law, says the "fast-track" and narrow federal assessment of the Gunns pulp mill announced by Mr Turnbull two weeks ago breaks national environmental laws.

Mr Turnbull and Gunns executive chairman John Gay declined to comment yesterday.

But federal Forestry Minister Eric Abetz labelled it a damaging and cynical action that could jeopardise Tasmania's biggest investment project.

The federal inquiry confines the scope of the Commonwealth assessment of the mill's environmental impact to any threatened species living or growing on the mill site, migratory birds and the marine environment of Bass Strait.

Mr Law said it was a disgrace the Government would not review the impact of the pulp mill _ which will consume more than four million tonnes of wood a year _ on Tasmania's native forests, forest wildlife and water resources.

Most of the timber for the pulp mill in at least its first five years of operation will be logged from Tasmania's native forests, mainly in the northeast of the state.

"We are not going to sit back and allow that to occur; we expected better of Mr Turnbull," Mr Law said.

"We believe national environmental laws do not allow that situation to arise where the massive appetite of this pulp mill for forests is not taken into account."

Gunns counters that within eight years 80 per cent of timber to be pulped will come from plantations.

The Government has said it does not need to consider the pulp mill's impact on native forests because forestry activities are exempt from national environmental laws under the Regional Forests Agreement Act.

But the Wilderness Society believes the December 2006 Wielangta forest court ruling, that all forestry operations must consider endangered species, casts doubt on the assumption made by Mr Turnbull and his department that forest impact does not need to be included in its pulp mill assessment process.

In legal documents lodged yesterday, the Wilderness Society also contends it is illegal for a developer such as Gunns to reject an approved independent state-federal assessment process such as the former Resource Planning and Development Commission one, only to be offered a less rigorous alternative by the Federal Government.

The case is listed for Hobart's Federal Court on May 31 before Justice Shane Marshall, the same judge who ruled in favour of Australian Greens leader Bob Brown in the Wielangta logging case against Forestry Tasmania.

Gunns has previously said that unless its pulp mill is given the green light by August, with construction beginning in September, it will axe the project.

The Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has accepted Surfrider's Petition for Reconsideration on the NPDES permit of the Georgia Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill in Toledo! The Petition presents formal scientific and legal arguments for the agency to strengthen the terms of the permit. In the coming months, DEQ will review the points raised in the Petition, modifiy the terms of the permit they deem necessary, and then issue the permit for a public review and comment process. Specific elements Surfrider is advocating for include: improved scientific monitoring, analysis of treatmentment alternatives, and provision of a smaller mixing zone. DEQ's acceptance of the Petition is huge! GP releases 10 million gallons of wastewater a day off Nye Beach near surf spots, fishery habitat, etc. Thank you to the nearly dozen members of Surfrider's Oregon Environmental Issues Team (scientists, attorneys, permit afficianados, etc) who volunteered their personal time to help pull this document together under a 60 day deadline. Also, major thanks to CRAG and NEDC for providing pro bono support to make this happen. You all ROCK!!

Georgia-Pacific pollution permit to be examined

BETH CASPER Statesman Journal
October 18, 2006

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality will reconsider the pollution permit for Georgia-Pacific’s pulp and paper mill in Toledo, the fifth time in six years the agency has done so.

The permit, renewed in July, regulates the millions of gallons of discharge released daily into the ocean in Newport.

Five environmental groups filed a petition with the agency last month. The DEQ’s decision to further evaluate the permit triggers a likely yearlong period of review and public comment.

“We’re really encouraged that DEQ has accepted our petition and hopeful that this will ultimately lead to a stronger permit to protect water quality on the central coast,” said Pete Stauffer, Oregon Policy Coordinator of Surfrider Foundation, one of the petitioners.

Among the pages of concerns Surfrider raised in the petition, two chief issues are improving monitoring of the water at Nye Beach and identifying treatment alternatives for the waste water coming from the plant.

Tom Picciano of Georgia-Pacific said the mill will continue to operate under the current permit during the review period.

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality officials said some of the petitioners’ concerns stemmed from a lack of clarity in the July permit’s language.

For example, petitioners said the new permit increased the size of the mixing zone, or physical area in which pollution can mix with water before it has to meet water quality standards.

“We know (the permit couldn’t) double the size of the mixing zone without going through review,” said John Ruscigno, the water-quality manager for the Salem office of the state DEQ. “But I can see how (the petitioners) drew that conclusion.”

Since 2000, the agency has agreed to reconsider every industrial water pollution permit that was challenged — a total of about five cases.

bcasper@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 589-6994

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