By Mike Benbow
Herald Writer
For residential customers of the Snohomish County PUD, electricity costs will climb 18 percent starting Monday.
But for Kimberly-Clark Corp., a major employer in the county and a major PUD customer, power costs will rise more than four times that amount, or 75 percent.
"It’s a matter of huge concern and priority," said Scott Felter, manager of Kimberly-Clark’s Everett pulp mill, earlier this week.
Felter and Dave Faddis, general manager of Kimberly Clark’s waterfront pulp and tissue mills, knew a significant rate increase was on the way. The operation had long had a negotiated agreement for lower rates, but that’s expiring.
But the increase was larger than expected and will cost the company millions of dollars at a time when it’s looking to trim costs as much as possible to remain competitive.
"It’s clearly taken us out of our comfort zone," Felter said.
Faddis said the company faces "an extreme challenge" as it looks for ways to conserve. "What we’re trying to do is find some creative ways to go forward," he said.
The situation places Kimberly-Clark in a bit of a Catch-22 because of its close relationship with the PUD.
The company and the PUD are partners in a co-generation facility in which Kimberly-Clark burns wood waste and other byproducts to generate steam, which it uses in its pulp-making process, and also creates electricity for the PUD.
It’s to everyone’s advantage that the pulp mill operate at peak capacity and produce as much electricity as possible, but the company may not be able to do that because of the increase in power costs, Felter said.
"We are in fact a generator for the PUD," he said. "We’re tied at the ankles to the PUD."
The rate hike comes amid a multimillion-dollar renovation of the company’s facilities here.
A $27 million project to lower water use dramatically and to change the pulp bleaching process have long been completed. The company no longer uses chlorine to bleach its fibers, a shift that should eliminate detectable dioxin — a cancer-causing substance — from its discharges.
Felter said the shift created several production bottlenecks, but added employees have responded well to the changes and that production levels are climbing.
New equipment and chemicals used to scrub the plants emissions created some problems and allowed a rotten egg smell, but those appear to be in the past, Felter said.
In addition to environmental improvements, the switch helped the company create a higher-quality pulp fiber, Felter said, one that may eventually allow the plant to make additional products.
Both he and Faddis said the company’s goal now is to convince the corporation that operations justify a major investment in new equipment.
"Once we address these energy costs, we need to upgrade technology in the tissue mill," Faddis said. "This equipment here was manufactured in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. We’re using vacuum tubes made in China, because they are made nowhere else."
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