EVERETT — Months after it spontaneously caught fire, a mountain of shredded wood waste in northeast Everett is still smoldering and likely will keep smoking for several more weeks.
The stink is wearing on the nerves — or at least the noses — of people who live in the Riverside neighborhood.
“You can’t get away from it and it’s absolutely nauseating,” said resident Doug Yearout.
Kimberly-Clark Co., which owns the burning pile, has workers watching over it and extinguishing flare ups 24 hours a day. The company also is hauling 35 truckloads of the wood scraps each day to its giant pulp mill on Everett’s waterfront.
“We’re doing as much as we can to consume as much of that pile now as possible,” said Chris Eisenberg, manager of mill which produces about 1 million rolls of tissue products a day.
The material, called “hog fuel,” is made of bark and other wood scrap. It’s burned in a Snohomish County Public Utilities-owned co-generation boiler at the mill to create steam. The steam is used in paper-making and generates enough electricity for about 21,000 homes.
Eisenberg said the boiler had a major malfunction in late June, which forced it to stop burning the wood scraps.
While the tissue maker waited to have the boiler fixed, the company did not call off shipments of the wood fuel, and the pile continued to grow to 120,000 tons — double what is normally stockpiles during the winter months.
“They had more than they could manage,” said Larry Altose, a spokesman with the state Department of Ecology.
The scraps are piled at a storage yard and former sawmill, alongside piles of logs and wood chips used in the pulping process, on property proposed by the city for a possible University of Washington branch campus.
The hog fuel wasn’t used fast enough, so it started composting. That built up heat, which eventually ignited in August.
Kimberly-Clark has used heavy equipment to move the pile around to stop the burning as much as possible. It also started hauling away about 1,000 tons a day after the boiler was repaired on Sept. 20, Altose said.
“It’s not just the type of thing you can just pour water on,” Altose said. “It’s more complicated than that.”
Crews use heavy equipment to cover up the burning areas. Pouring water on the pile would accelerate the smoldering, Eisenberg said.
The Everett Fire Department was called out to the site a few times before the city’s assistant fire marshal became involved, said city spokeswoman Kate Reardon.
By Aug. 10, Assistant Fire Marshal Brad Olson told Kimberly-Clark to watch the pile around the clock and to cut off the fuel deliveries. The company has been responsive to all of the city’s requests, Reardon said.
Meanwhile, the smokey burn has prompted odor and air quality complaints to the Department of Ecology and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.
The Riverside neighborhood is taking the brunt of it.
Yearout, a veterinarian, lives just west of the burning pile on a maple-lined bluff in the 2300 block of E. Grand Avenue.
“It just permeates. The clothes stink, the house stinks, you can’t open the windows and ventilate it,” Yearout said. “It’s like being by a camp fire all the time with the wind blowing in the wrong direction.”
Yearout said he has voiced his concerns with the company and state regulators, and is growing impatient. He recently put flyers on mailboxes informing neighbors of his efforts to have the fire extinguished.
Kimberly-Clark is investigating ways to minimize the impact on neighbors, Eisenberg said.
The company is on pace to clear the smoldering waste within the next few months. The pile is now down to 90,000 tons, a more manageable level than in August, he said.
Kristi Kramer, Yearout’s partner and a civil engineer, said she doesn’t believe everything possible is being done to get the fire put out once and for all.
“If Joe Blow homeowner burns during a burn ban, he gets a ticket right away,” she said. “And here a corporation is able to affect our health adversely and not have to do anything. And that’s what I’m frustrated with.”
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