Last winter Oregon Dept of Environmental Quality accepted Newport Chapter's Petition of Reconsideration of the NPDES permit for the Georgia Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill in Toledo, Oregon. Below is a recent update from DEQ....(thins are moving slowly)

We’ve been slowly working on the reconsideration this year, going over their petition point by point and meeting with WQ HQ staff and Larry Knudsen to make sure we’re being consistent with how we respond to their points. Mostly to make sure we’re consistent with how they’ve responded in other lawsuits. We’ve had three meetings and covered all the petitioner’s issues that have program-wide implications such as how we addressed turbidity in the permit. Steve Schnurbusch, the permit writer, has also spent quite a bit of time between those meetings researching their questions. Bottom line is that we have done a lot of work on it that the petitioner’s probably aren’t aware of. We originally told them we’d try to get it all done this year and would put out on public notice any changes we were going to make to the permit. What has slowed us down is that this is also the final year of the big permit push so all the permit writers are pretty loaded with a lot of other permits and we’re fitting this reconsideration in between all that other permitting work. Right now, it looks like we won’t get it all done this year. I just met with Steve and Mark Hamlin again last week on the reconsideration and I decided we’re going to put this work on hold at least through October while we concentrate on getting all the other permits out that we’re obligated to issue this year.



That was a long and complicated answer to a pretty simple question. I hope it makes sense to you. If Charlie wants to give me a call to discuss, don’t hesitate to give him my number.



John J. Ruscigno

Water Quality Manager

Western Region North

503-378-5081