
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 16, 1990                   TAG: 9003162762
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

WESTVACO STAYS ON POLLUTER LIST FOR TIME BEING

A federal judge has dismissed Westvaco Corp.'s lawsuit that would have removed the company's Covington mill and the nearby Jackson River from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists of polluters and polluted waters.

U.S. District Judge James C. Turk said that the EPA's list was only a proposed one and that the company can submit arguments for removal from the lists before they are final in June.

To force EPA to defend its proposed actions at this point, Turk said in the opinion filed Monday, would be premature and waste the agency's scarce judicial resources.

In 1987, amendments to the federal Clean Water Act required states to identify polluted streams and sources of the pollution. The state Water Control Board did not include Westvaco on its polluter lists then because state officials said they lacked proof the company's discharges were toxic to aquatic life.

But last June, EPA put Westvaco's Covington mill and another Virginia paper mill, Union Camp Corp. on the Blackwater River in Franklin City, on its lists and accused them of dumping too much dioxin in rivers. Westvaco officials have said they have reduced by 98 percent their production of dioxin, a byproduct of paper-pulp bleaching processes and a suspected carcinogen.

Turk noted in his opinion that if Westvaco were placed on the EPA's list, it would have until June 1993 to comply with federal water standards.

by CNB