Although I’ve seen quite a few abandoned paper mills, I still often get stunned when confronting new ones. The common denominator for the spectacular ones is very often environmental sins accumulated over a very long time and it seems that the most convenient way for previous owner is a bankruptcy. This behavior turns it into a headache for the local county instead, which in the end typically leads to government funds having to cover up the cleaning costs, which tends to be very high.

The typical site producing non-mechanical pulp rinsed out large volumes of cellulose fibers to nearby lakes and rivers together with chlorinated bleaching chemicals. On top of this, the process of producing the alkaline cooking liquor and the chlorine gas for bleaching involved electrolysis using a liquid mercury electrode, which caused a substantial leakage of mercury as well. So, buried into the bottom sediments of the lakes nearby are thousands of tons of cellulose fibers, stable chlorinated compounds and mercury, consuming free oxygen thereby killing all marine life. Thanks - a nice heritage from our parents.

This particular site has been abandoned for some fifteen years and suffered the typical death of similar mills - too small to be competetive.
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