BY JAMES FAHN
KHON KAEN A high-ranking manager of Phoenix Pulp and Paper Plc has acknowledged that waste water from his company's factory in Khon Kaen could cause damage to surrounding farms ''in the long run".
Deputy managing director S K Mittal also said the company would make ''big improvements" to the factory to help prevent the future release of soil-damaging compounds in its effluence.
The Phoenix factory Asia's largest pulp producer, according to company officials caused a major controversy in 1995 when the treated waste water it uses to irrigate nearby eucalyptus plantations under a programme known as ''Project Green" overflowed into surrounding farmland.
Farmers in the area claim the accident damaged their fields and caused some of their rice crop to die off.
Although Mittal agreed that the waste water ''seepage" was a regrettable mistake, he denied it has caused any damage so far.
But Dr Usa Krinhom, a soil expert from Maha Sarakham University currently conducting a study for Phoenix, pointed out that if the company's effluence could damage the soil in the future, then in all likelihood it has already had some impact.
Phoenix has compensated the farmers for the 1995 accident, paying them a total of Bt1 million last year, Mittal said, and has stopped using its effluence to irrigate fields to the east of its factory, where a rocky substrate prevents all the water from being absorbed, causing seepage into neighbouring farms.
''But we are continuing our commitments to those farmers," he added.
Phoenix is also in the process of purchasing around 4,000 rai of farmland to the west of the factory where it will plant and irrigate its own eucalyptus plantations instead of those belonging to contract farmers.
In addition, the company has commissioned researchers at Khon Kaen University and Maha Sarakham University to carry out irrigation and soil quality studies, respectively.
The results remain confidential and are not absolutely conclusive, according to the scientists who worked on the studies. But their research indicates the treated waste water from Phoenix contains some compounds notably chlorides and sodium which damage the already poor soil in the area.
''There is a possibility that in the long run there could be an accumulation of chlorides and sodium in the soil, so we are going to make big improvements in the factory," said Mittal, who added that the Stock Exchange of Thailand would have to be informed before actual figures could be revealed to the public.
''We are trying to reduce the chlorides and sodium in the effluence," he added.
Many chloride compounds (such as sodium chloride and potassium chloride) are salts, and so cause increased salinity in the soil. According to Usa, however, these chlorides should eventually leach away.
Sodium, on the other hand, is a bigger problem because it causes the earth to harden and will continue to accumulate in the soil, Usa said. Her team has proposed counteracting its effects with the use of gypsum salts.
''In some places, the soil has got worse, although we can't say for sure if this is a result of Project Green," she said. ''We have proposed several models to rehabilitate the soil." The findings of the Khon Kaen team, headed by irrigation expert Dr Wanpen Wirojanagud, seem to agree.
''We compared irrigated soil to non-irrigated soil for chloride content and the results were not much different, although we studied them only for a short period, around three to four months," said Wanphen. ''But we did find a high absorption ratio for sodium."
Her team recommended that Phoenix build irrigation ditches and embankments to prevent the waste water from overflowing into neighbouring fields.
They also suggested altering irrigation rates each month to account for varying rainfall, since flooding during the rainy season has been partially responsible for the seepage problems. The remaining waste water should be recycled, said Wanphen.
Mittal said Phoenix recycles water many times at its factory. While it used to take 40,000 cubic metres (m3) of water per day to run one production line, he said, following an expansion and improvement programme begun in 1992, only 20,000 m3/day of water is now used to operate two production lines. Around 15,000 m3/day of waste water emitted by the factory is used for irrigation, with the remaining 5,000 m3/day released into the Huay Chote stream, which flows into the Nam Phong River.
Mittal said that Phoenix was asked to set up Project Green in 1993 by the National Environment Board, which wanted to see a halt to waste water discharges into the river.
The most serious concern about the waste water is whether it contains dioxin, a highly toxic chemical which is often a by-product of chlorine bleaching processes used by pulp and paper mills. Phoenix insists there is no dioxin in its effluence and offers lab analyses to prove it.
But Chutima Kookusamard, an assistant professor of chemistry at Khon Kaen University, says that a lab sample analysed in France in 1992 found high levels of dioxin in the waste water. In later samples taken after Phoenix's expansion that year, however, the dioxin figures were quite low.
''We would like to analyse the sediment at the bottom of Huay Chote, but we don't have the equipment yet," said Chutima. The Phoenix plant is now nearly two decades old and Chutima noted that dioxin is quite long-lasting.
Adding confusion to the whole issue is the presence in the effluence of lignin, an organic substance which Phoenix says is harmless, but which turns the waste water a murky colour, raising the suspicions of nearby farmers.
''Bacteria in the soil can't digest all the lignin, so it turns the soil red, but it doesn't affect the soil's quality," Usa explained.
Another study of the soil around Phoenix's plant has been carried out by the local Land Development Office at the request of the governor of Khon Kaen.
The office's director, Rungroj Puenpan, said they found the soil to be highly acidic and salty in some areas affected by seepage, but could not determine whether these are natural conditions or were caused by Phoenix until more samples are taken.
Mittal pointed out that if the waste water was really so damaging, all the land affected by seepage would have soil of poor quality.