Columbia Pulp contemplating the next step for the Pomeroy plant

POMEROY–Mike Shock, Vice President of Columbia Pulp, and one of the three founders of the company took time to explained some intricacies relating to the purpose of the local plant during a Pomeroy Garfield County Community Economic Development Forum in meeting last November. He stated that the Pomeroy plant was started as a pilot plant with the intention of debugging the process of making pulp products from wheat byproducts. They also wanted to use the facility to train people and generate samples of the pulp commodities to use for marketing purposes.

Columbia Pulp’s contribution to the Pomeroy community is evidenced by their employment of 21 Pomeroy residents, making up about 25% of their workforce, and including about 5% of Pomeroy families. They estimate that they have spent $850,000 in the community with eight different vendors. Twenty people were employed at the Pomeroy plant when it was up and running, and are now being utilized at the Central Ferry plant. The Pomeroy entity was not intended to be a permanent mill facility once the larger-scale mill was constructed in the Central Ferry/Starbuck area. However, the company may plan to keep using the Pomeroy plant as a research and development facility, especially with the significant amount of money invested in improvements made to the building to accommodate the plant operations. But they may lease the plant to another company with related use format, such as manufacturing molded fiber products. But it will take the “just right” deal for leasing it, with the desire to keep it running in some capacity.

A major drawback encountered by Columbia Pulp has been how to deal with wastewater produced by the plant. They have not been able to discharge the amount of wastewater needed due to the limited capacity allowed by the City’s wastewater treatment plant. The City’s plant has the capacity to handle the discharged water, but only operates at half its actual capacity, claiming that the turbidity and foam involved in the discharge cannot be processed there. Instead, Columbia Pulp has been paying “hundreds of thousands” of dollars to haul wastewater away for disposal, according to Schock. Even though Columbia Pulp has offered to help pay for the added expense to the City’s wastewater plant, and has paid a very significant wastewater fee, they are still not receiving any further assistance from the City in solving this problem.

The Lyons Ferry plant is currently making pulp, although they have had some mechanical problems to work out. They are producing about 15 tons of pulp each day, and operating 24 hours per day, seven days per week. They are using the 21 employees from the Pomeroy plant to start up the Lyons Ferry plant. The Pomeroy plant will not be open for operations before January, 2020.

Schock shared some samples of products that were made from wheat pulp and stated that the future is bright for this type of product. He predicts that single-use plastic food service products will become a thing of the past in the near future, as well as Styrofoam products, adding that pulp products are recyclable, compostable and biodegradable, and becoming more popular every day. He also gave a heartfelt thank-you to the Garfield County/Pomeroy community who have been extremely supportive, helpful and welcoming.