EVERETT – The days are long gone when Kimberly-Clark’s Everett paper mill dumped an untreated, gooey concoction of chemicals and dissolved wood pulp directly into Port Gardner Bay.

The modern Everett pulp and paper mill still releases liquid leftovers into the bay, and still pumps pollutants into the air through its smokestacks, but at levels that are as much as 100 times less than when the plant first opened in the 1930s.

Lignin, the part of wood chips not needed in the papermaking process, is filtered out and burned to generate the steam that the mill needs to make products such as toilet paper and paper towels.

Any leftover liquid waste is sent to Kimberly-Clark’s wastewater treatment plant. Most airborne pollutants are removed through smokestack filters.

“We have come an awful long way,” said Dick Abrams, the mill’s environmental manager.

The paper mill does produce a handful of health-harming pollutants that are regulated by federal and state laws, standards that the mill has met in recent years except for a handful of violations.

The company must restrict the amount of leftover pulp that goes into the bay to protect oxygen for fish. It also must limit sulfur dioxide emitted when wood waste is burned to make steam, and limit the release of a series of toxic chemicals that build up when ingested.

Overseeing the plant’s environmental efforts is the state Department of Ecology. Its job is to make sure the plant doesn’t harm people’s health or the environment, while keeping in mind that the mill provides needed products and employs 876 people.

“What we’re trying to work for is a balance between the county’s economic health and its environmental health,” said Caitlin Cormier, a spokeswoman for the Ecology Department. “If there can be steady steps taken toward getting to zero emissions, those are the steps we want to support.”

Cormier said her department wants Kimberly-Clark to study making the switch from chlorine dioxide to bleach the paper the mill produces. That’s something environmentalists say is a must; Kimberly-Clark points out the process is too expensive and creates a product people won’t buy.

Mill critics say it’s the use of chlorine dioxide that produces dioxins, mercury and chlorinated organics, three groups of chemicals that do not break down in the environment. These build up via the food chain in fish, animals and people. At high levels, they can cause a variety of health problems, including reproductive problems.

Kimberly-Clark’s operation produces all three at trace levels. In all three cases, emissions are less than the government standard, or there is no standard.

“Any amount is not good, because it moves up the food chain,” said Laurie Valeriano of the Washington Toxics Coalition, an environmental group.

Kimberly-Clark has spent about $50 million in the past five years to make environmental improvements, highlighted by a switch from using elemental chlorine to bleach the mill’s paper to using chlorine dioxide, which is less toxic and safer.

Kimberly-Clark believes it has cleaned up as much as it reasonably can, though the company wants to continue lowering emissions.

Abrams said the threat from the mill’s emissions is overstated. Water released into the bay is treated as well as any city’s wastewater, he said, and emissions from its smokestacks are similar, although more concentrated, to those produced by cars or by burning trash in a backyard.

“It’s gotten to the point of diminishing returns,” Abrams said.

Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.