Since
1988, the paper industry has reduced its discharge of pollutants
into the environment by more than 75%. In the fall of 2000,
the Ministère de l’Environnement du Québec
and the Forest Products Association of Canada agreed to
implement a compliance attestation program that would further
protect the environment from the impacts of industrial
sectors. The pulp and paper sector is the first industrial
sector in Quebec that must comply with these new regulations.
The remaining sectors will gradually find themselves similarly
regulated. Papier Masson is already well below the currently
stipulated norms, and we consider ourselves enthusiastic
supporters of the new system.
What
is environmental compliance attestation?
An environmental
compliance attestation is essentially an operating permit
that is valid for 5 years and renewable upon expiry.
This legal environmental permit obliges compliance with
all the standards, laws and regulations currently in
force for pulp and paper plants. While it covers issues
of water, air, soil and residues impact, the first certification
is focussed primarily on evaluating discharges into the
watercourse.
What this attestation
program has introduced for the first time is the element
of continuous improvement in environmental protection.
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The attestation
program is the channel through which the Ministry can improve
environmental protection by instituting environmental discharge
objectives (EDO) which may later become norms and standards
These objectives
are set by taking into account how the watercourse is used
and other contributing factors. For the first two years
of its certification, a mill has to monitor the presence
and level of various substances in the water. After that,
the Ministry decides the EDO for substances present in
significant concentrations.
During the five years of an attestation’s validity, every mill
must conduct technical and economic studies in order to establish with
the Ministry a plan for reaching its discharge objectives. Once this
depollution plan has been drawn up, Environment Quebec integrates the
new discharge norms for the plant into the second environmental compliance
attestation.
Since discharge
objectives and eventual new norms are a function of the
receiving environment, each plant will have different EDO
and norms that reflect the watercourse involved.
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