Today marked a milestone in the site preparation for the Bellingham waterfront redevelopment.  The gigantic hoppers that fed chips to the pulp digesters were toppled to clear the way for demolishing the rest of the digester building.  Demolition should proceed quickly from here.  A reasonable crowd of a hundred or so braved the cold to watch for the eventful moment.

The public should be wary of fugitive dust emissions from the site, as mercury has been seen to saturate building materials in the vicinity of mercury vapor emissions such as occurred from the chlor-alkali production cells.  Similarly, the demolition debris should be tested, since methylation of mercury is known to occur even in environments with high sulfide concentrations.  The sulfide based operation of Georgia-Pacific has often been used to suggest that methylation of mercury should be minimal, but studies elsewhere have shown otherwise.