Over the Christmas holidays, the Government of Manitoba quietly agreed to let the Louisiana Pacific Corporation (LP), with extensive forestry operations in North America, shut down pollution control equipment at one of its wood products plants in the west-central part of the province.

As a result, many emissions such as benzene, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, have apparently been escaping into the air since January at its “oriented strand board” (OSB) plant near Minitonas in the SwanValley. (OSB is a building product similar to plywood made mostly from poplar tree fiber.)

Now, LP wants to keep that equipment shut down, permanently. Much to the chagrin of environmental groups, the Government is considering that request.

Ironically, it was the New Democratic Opposition Party, now the government, that insisted that the equipment, called “regenerative thermal oxidizers,”(RTOs) be installed when LP was first issued its Manitoba license back in the late 90’s. So did a government advisory body, the Clean Environment Commission. Environmentalists added their voices to the calls for controls.

Under the pressure, the government and company capitulated.

Don Sullivan of the Winnipeg-based Boreal Forest Network says the RTOs cost the company about $10 million dollars and now need to be replaced. Sullivan suggests this plus the cost of operating them are the real reasons behind the company’s move.

Sullivan says he can appreciate that the housing slump in the “States has hit sales of OSB. But the company decision, he adds, shouldn’t come at the expense of the health of those living near the plant. Both Sullivan and another official of the Boreal Action Network, Susanne McRae, note that the housing crisis is worse in the US than Canada, yet all OSB plants in the ‘States have pollution controls. So, they reason, Canada deserves the same treatment.

LP has had a bit of a chequered past in terms of its environmental record in the United States. In the 1990’s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), imposed what, at the time, was its largest fine ever on the company. It ordered LP to pay more than $11 million for falsely reporting how much pollution its OSB plants there were emitting.

It was also ordered to outfit those plants with the best pollution abatement technology available.

But that isn’t the end of the story.

Less than three years ago, the EPA cited Louisiana Pacific again for allegedly exceeding emission limits for smoke, ash and dust from one of its OSB plants in Michigan. As Bharat Mathur of the EPA put it at the time, “Inhaling high concentrations of particulates can affect children, the elderly and people with heart and lung conditions.”

A long-time critic of LP operations, Dan Soprovich of Swan River, is quoted as saying, “This is a cost-driven decision that will compromise human health and the environment as a means to support an American company that has taken millions of dollars out of this province.”

Soprovich was a government biologist when LP was originally granted its license. He was fired after opposing the project, saying LP had given extremely optimistic forecasts about how sustainable the forest would be in the harvest area.

Manitoba’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Conservation, Ryan Coulter, has so far been the only government official to comment. He told CBC Radio recently that monitoring at the site has shown that pollutants do not seem to have exceeded allowable limits, so far. Coulter left open the possibility of a public consultation process on the issue and even a formal hearing by the Clean Environment Commission before a final decision is made.

In any case, the temporary permit already issued seems to guarantee the company it can keep its RTOs offine until June. Louisiana Pacific hasn’t commented publicly, so far.