Pipeline is lifeline

ABERCROMBIE POINT - Gargantuan black tubes lay stretched over a gentle slope leading to the East River Monday morning, waiting to be inched over the water.
Nine hundred feet and change in length and 36 inches in diameter, each section of the new high-density polyethylene pipeline will be attached end to end and eventually tied into the existing infrastructure connecting the Northern Pulp mill and its water effluent treatment infrastructure in Boat Harbour.
As recently as last week, the old line, which has been in place since 1967, fissured and leaked effluent into the river, which resulted in a mill outage.
Chief operating officer, Wayne Gosse, said the latest development was "extremely difficult … given the considerable challenges our mill is already facing as a result of the poor global economy and paper markets."
At the time of the leak, according to information from Northern Pulp, the mill had originally scheduled a nine-and-a-half day maintenance shutdown, beginning June 20.
The plan was to tie in the pipeline replacement with the shutdown, but the recent leak has accelerated the timeline. As a result, the maintenance shutdown began Monday, and now the company is looking to have the new line in place June 19, and it's hoped it will be in time for the mill to resume operation the very next day.
Don Breen, vice-president of manufacturing said it "didn't make sense to effect a repair on the old pipeline."
Pipeline related shutdowns have already caused 21 days of lost production, between November 2008 and January 2009.
"In recent years, repairs have been made to the existing line. These repairs have been costly and have resulted in significant production downtime for the mill. We see this project as vital to our future," Gosse said.
And, as a result, the mill's timber operations will be scaled back for most of the months of June.
The pipeline project will cost $3 million. Paying for it was made possible through a multi-year provincial government loan. Gosse said it's helping Northern Pulp to remain viable in a trying era for the pulp industry.
"The pipeline is our lifeline - operating without future failures is vital to us. It's great to see this project become a reality," he said.