By Rob Kreizenbeck, CEO, Port Townsend Paper Company
A cardboard box has a short public life. It arrives on a doorstep, carries groceries home or protects something breakable. Then someone flattens it, puts it in a recycling bin and moves on. At Port Townsend Paper Company, that is where another story begins.
Our mill recycles approximately 450 million pounds of used cardboard each year. Our employees turn discarded material into paper that can become useful packaging again. The mill also uses Northwest sawmill byproducts, putting material left over from one manufacturing process to work in another. That is a substantial piece of the region’s recycling economy, operating here on our waterfront.
But recycling cardboard is only part of our responsibility. The people who live here care about the water outside their windows, the safety of their neighbors and the future of this place. They should. Those concerns belong at the center of any conversation about the mill. The question is what we are doing to meet them.
We’ve spent approximately $7.7 million across 18 wastewater-related projects, including a new dump truck, to improve our mill’s treatment system. We plan to spend approximately $4 million more on dredging this fall and winter, bringing the total investment in the wastewater treatment system close to $12 million once that work is complete. Behind those figures are new equipment, repaired infrastructure, difficult lessons and work that rarely attracts attention until something goes wrong. These investments deserve a closer look because they help answer a question facing many manufacturing communities: What does it take to give an established industrial facility a better future?
At our mill, some of the answers are decidedly unglamorous. A machine that squeezes water out of sludge. A screen that catches trash. A gearbox that keeps treatment equipment moving. A repaired sewer line beneath the floor. Few people will ever see those improvements. Everyone has a stake in whether they work. Take the FKC sludge screw press, a project with approximately $1.88 million in recorded spending. Its purpose is easy to understand. Once wastewater treatment separates solids from water, those solids still must go somewhere. Removing more water makes the material easier to handle and means less water travels with it when it is hauled away. The new press replaces an outdated coil filter. It is designed to provide more capacity, improve solids handling and address dirty water returning from the older equipment to the sewer system.
That might sound like an equipment purchase. In practice, it is part of making the entire treatment process work better. Dredging a pond is less useful if the material removed cannot be managed effectively. Every stage depends on the next. That connection helps explain another substantial investment: approximately $2.51 million across three projects involving the treatment pond, including contractor dredging, work around internal curtains and reactivation of the mill’s own dredging equipment.
Of that amount, approximately $670,000 went toward bringing the mill’s idle dredging system back into service, including preparing it for continuing maintenance. Having that capability matters because managing solids is an ongoing operating responsibility.
We have recorded approximately $2.32 million across six projects involving the primary clarifier, a central piece of equipment that separates solids from wastewater before the water moves farther through treatment. The work included emergency repairs, gearbox replacement, a drive rebuild and upgrades, replacement-drive purchases and repairs to internal components.
Another approximately $491,000 went toward installing a traveling bar screen at the main sewer pump station. Think of it as an early checkpoint. The screen removes trash before wastewater reaches equipment that cannot effectively manage it. Catching unwanted material upstream helps keep it from becoming someone else’s problem farther through the system.
That is also the thinking behind a smaller project to reduce fiber entering the sewer from the mill’s recycled-container processing operation. Approximately $55,500 went toward piping and controls intended to keep more material out of wastewater and potentially reduce water use.
Still, the principle is straightforward: recover useful material where possible and reduce the burden on treatment equipment.
The investment list continues into places even less likely to draw public attention.
- $72,500 for a collapsed sewer line beneath processing equipment.
- $93,000 for an emergency replacement engine serving an effluent pump.
- $139,000 for a replacement conveyor designed to restore operation and address corrosion.
A treatment system depends on all these parts. Wastewater must move through sound pipes. Pumps need dependable power. Removed material needs somewhere to go. A weakness in one place can create work and risk somewhere else. That is why a credible improvement program must reach beyond its biggest purchase.
It also must recognize the people doing the work. Every project on this list required someone to diagnose a problem, develop a solution, coordinate the work and put equipment into service. Then employees must operate it, maintain it and recognize when something needs attention. These are skilled jobs involving judgment and responsibility. The people doing them deserve equipment and systems that support their work.
They also deserve a public conversation that recognizes their stake in the outcome. They leave the mill and return to the same community as everyone else.
Our investment program extends beyond wastewater. Improvements to our boilers have helped reduce fossil-fuel use by approximately 40% since 2022.
Our workforce also recently renewed a four-year agreement with United Steelworkers.
Together, those developments speak to the kind of future we are building; an operation that improves its performance while sustaining skilled employment and driving a strong economy here in the community we share.
Port Townsend has a direct interest in what happens inside this mill. The cardboard collected for recycling, the people reporting for work each day and the water beyond the waterfront are all connected through the decisions made here every day. We are working hard to be excellent, trusted stewards of this Mill, and we will continue to strengthen that work in the months and years ahead.