We are a community-driven coalition dedicated to protecting the health, safety, and environmental integrity of Port Townsend and its surrounding waters. We advocate for clean air, clean water, transparency, and accountability, ensuring that industry operates responsibly, informed by science, and in a way that safeguards our families, our livelihoods, and future generations.
Every signature, every public comment, and every person at a meeting is part of the record. It's how a community's concern becomes something regulators and elected officials can't quietly set aside.
No state or federal agency currently requires structural safety inspection of the atmospheric tanks that store white liquor, the same chemical involved in the Longview implosion. As University of Washington occupational health researcher Marissa Baker put it: “The federal or state agencies would not have kind of purview on inspecting, maintaining the tank… That's going to really fall on the employer.”
Read the finding →In early 2023, PTPC's own management requested an independent compliance audit. Upper management cancelled it the day before it was scheduled. Asked what it might have found, the auditor wrote: “Would we have uncovered environmental issues? Who knows, but I suspect we could have helped mitigate some of the concerns now being expressed.”
Read the finding →Fourteen separate permit exceedances in one episode settled for $27,000. State law, in its own words, allows Ecology to impose “a penalty in an amount of up to ten thousand dollars a day for every such violation” (RCW 90.48.144), a ceiling this settlement fell far short of.
Read the finding →Most of this campaign’s research documents what has gone wrong at Port Townsend Paper Company (PTPC). This is the other half: what regulators already require, what the industry’s most advanced mills already do voluntarily, and what PTPC’s own corporate parent is doing at another mill it owns right now.
Non-condensable gas collection systems capture kraft pulping’s characteristic odor at the source and route it to incineration. Valmet documents over 40 years and hundreds of these system deliveries worldwide; a competing supplier, Andritz, offers an equivalent line. One mill using it, Compania Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC) Guaiba in Brazil, has operated as a certified near-total odor-free mill since 2015.
Read the finding →Pratt Industries operates large United States containerboard mills built from the ground up on 100 percent recycled fiber, with no kraft cooking process and no white liquor of any kind on site. Finch Paper, owned by Atlas Holdings (PTPC’s own parent company), announced in July 2026 that it is discontinuing on-site pulping altogether.
Read the finding →Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) Containerboard’s Munksund (2015) and Obbola (2022) mills in Sweden became the first fully fossil-free kraft mills in the world. Metsa Fibre’s Kemi mill in Finland started up in 2023 on zero fossil fuels and now exports surplus energy to the regional grid.
Read the finding →This site is organized around five areas. Pages for each topic are being built out over time. Items marked in italics are planned but not yet published.
For workers and the community alike. No state or federal agency currently requires structural safety inspection of the atmospheric tanks at Port Townsend Paper Company that store white liquor, the same chemical involved in the Longview mill disaster that killed 11 workers. We’re advocating to close that gap before it costs someone here the same way.
Grounded in real health science, not assumptions. A 2024 federal health consultation by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) put the acute hazard index for sulfur compounds near Port Townsend Paper Company at 90, against a threshold of concern of just 1. We’re advocating for that finding to drive real action, not sit unaddressed.
Our waterways and air, protected in fact. Port Townsend Paper Company discharges roughly 9.6 million gallons of treated wastewater into Port Townsend Bay every day, and has spent 11 of the last 12 quarters in Clean Air Act High Priority Violation status. We’re advocating for compliance that’s independently verified, not just claimed.
What's known should be known by everyone, not just what Port Townsend Paper Company chooses to disclose. That means real answers from PTPC itself, from its parent company Atlas Holdings, and from the Washington State Department of Ecology, the state regulator responsible for oversight. Seven public records requests are currently open with state regulators.
At Port Townsend Paper Company, the rules that already exist, actually enforced. Fourteen separate permit exceedances in one episode were settled for $27,000, a fraction of what state law actually allows. We’re advocating for enforcement that matches the scale of the violations, not just the cost of doing business.
Formal response required by September 1, 2026, on our petition for mandatory tank inspection.
Jul 8, 2026 →Following the Longview disaster, Labor & Industries has opened inspections at PTPC.
Jul 8, 2026 →Our petition grew to more than 1,000 signatures on Change.org. We’ve now moved to Action Network so we can stay in touch with everyone who’s signed and keep building this list. If you signed before, please sign again here; it only takes a minute.
Aug 13, 2026 →