LUKE -- The NewPage paper mill in Western Maryland burns 1,400 tons of coal a day to transform rough logs into rivers of shiny white paper for glossy catalogues such as Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma.
Another product: 1.9 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide, a gas that scientists have concluded causes global warming.
A bill being considered in Annapolis today would require businesses across the state to cut their average emissions of pollutants that cause global warming by 25 percent by 2020 and by 90 percent by 2050.
Gary Curtis, a vice president of NewPage, said these limits could mean he would have to replace coal with natural gas - which creates less carbon dioxide but costs five times as much.
He said he could try to make his machinery more energy-efficient, but that would shave only a few percentage points off his fuel consumption. Substituting wind or solar power for coal wouldn't work, he said, because they are not reliable enough to run his wood pulping machines 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
"It would basically put us out of business," said Curtis, as he watched a clattering conveyor belt carry logs into a machine with whirling blades.
"We need to have [pollution] goals that are aggressive but achievable - and forcing us to do this much would be disastrous," he said.
With 950 employees, NewPage is the largest industrial employer in Western Maryland. And it's one of several businesses in the state, including the former Bethlehem Steel mill and power plants, that have complained that the Global Warming Solutions Act could make it impossible for them to compete by imposing limits that do not exist in other states or countries.
The bill is the subject of a hearing today before the House Economic Matters and Environmental Matters committees.
Supporters of the proposal, including Gov. Martin O'Malley, argue that the economy needs to evolve away from fossil fuels or the human race might eventually be destroyed by climate change.
"We need to move into a much more sustainable future or else we cease to exist as a species," said O'Malley, a Democrat. "People can talk about the increased cost of things. But what sort of increased costs will come from a four-foot rise in sea level for businesses located at Sparrows Point or in Annapolis or in downtown Baltimore?"
No details yet
The bill doesn't specify how much each business would have to cut or what technology they would have to use instead of burning coal and oil. Instead, it would require the Maryland Department of the Environment to issue a series of regulations that would gradually reduce emissions from all sectors of society - including transportation, homes and industry.
The sponsors of the bill, Democrats Sen. Paul G. Pinsky of Prince George's County and Del. Kumar P. Barve of Montgomery, say it's impossible for businesses to say the law would bankrupt them when the regulations haven't even been written yet.
They say the predictions of doom are similar to the auto industry's cries of wolf during the 1970s when the Congress first imposed fuel efficiency rules. And they predict thousands of new "green" businesses will spring up in windmill construction, home insulation, window replacement, energy-efficient architecture and the manufacture of solar panels.
Tad Aburn, director of the MDE's air division, said his agency has never shut down an industry, and it would continue to be careful as it figured out these new regulations.
"Every business in Maryland is struggling to reduce their energy costs, and what we're doing is along the same path - because reducing carbon dioxide emissions is all about reducing energy consumption," Aburn said.
Unlike other pollutants, carbon dioxide can't be filtered out in the smokestacks of coal-burning plants. Capturing the gas and recycling or burying it has been tried on a small scale, but those techniques aren't commercially viable.
Aburn said it's possible that by 2050, new technology to capture carbon dioxide will be invented - and plants such as NewPage will be able to keep burning coal.
Neal Elliott, a mechanical engineer with the nonprofit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, said Maryland's proposed law need not shut the paper mill or any other business.
Greater efficiency
He said American industry on average has improved energy efficiency by 40 percent over the past three decades to save money. More than doubling that number over the next half-century is possible, he said.
"The paper mill should produce its own fuel from wood waste," Elliott said. "Use your waste. When you've got a pig, use everything but the squeal."
The NewPage plant already gets a third of its power by burning a form of wood waste - a black tar-like byproduct of the papermaking process.
But Curtis said doing much more would be expensive. And he said his mill has thin profit margins because of intense competition from Chinese paper mills, which have almost no environmental regulations. Because of this foreign competition, the Luke plant has cut 450 jobs and shut a third of its paper machines over the past nine years.
Thomas Caldwell, a 39-year veteran worker at the plant and president of the U.S. Steelworkers Union local that represents employees here, said he's worried about the plant closing and the area's tax base and schools being "crippled" because of the proposed law.
"It makes absolutely no sense to allow us to burn no coal here in Maryland - but allow our Chinese competition to burn coal to make the exact same product," Caldwell said.
The factory rolls out 1,530 tons a day of magazine-quality paper used for catalogues and other publications. The company pays its employees an average of $22.50 an hour - a high wage in a poor rural area that saw its tire, glass and textile factories close in the 1970s and 1980s.
Plant from the past
The paper mill looks like something from the 19th century. It churns away next to the Potomac River in a wooded Appalachian mountain valley, with vast clouds of steam billowing out of its 623-foot-tall brick smokestack and rolling above nearby rowhouses.
The factory hasn't always been easy on the environment. The state in 2000 imposed a $450,000 fine against the factory's former owner, Westvaco, and the operator of a sewage plant used by the mill for polluting the Potomac River.
But the mill is literally connected to the community.
Steam pipes from the plant's boilers run under the town's main street and provide heat for 21 nearby homes. The 80 residents of the town of Luke (named after William Luke, who started the first mill here in 1888) also get water, sewage and trash collection from the factory.
"This is one of the lone remaining heavy industries in the whole region," said Matt Diaz, director of economic development for Allegany County. "If it closed, it would have a ripple effect all over Western Maryland, impacting not only mill workers, but also a lot of loggers and coal miners and truck drivers."
tom.pelton@baltsun.com