APC Lawsuit
Dear Editor: Thirty years ago today (Feb. 28, 1992) I filed a lawsuit against Alaska Pulp Corporation, concerning its water pollution. Six weeks was scheduled for a jury trial in fall 1994, in Juneau.
We settled the suit a few weeks before the trial date. This was about one year after the mill had closed (mainly as a result of global economic changes for its niche product, dissolving pulp). The settlement established the Sitka Alaska Permanent Charitable Trust.
Many who have moved to Sitka since that time are unfamiliar with what the lawsuit was about and may be curious. This 12-min Youtube video (https://bit.ly/3HnsUTu) was among the evidence the jury would have seen. The description (under “see more”) describes the pollution and circumstances that each scene shows. The videos were shot by Florian Sever over a period of a few years.
The suit was a class action of waterfront property owners. Its intent was to end APC’s water pollution, by forcing the mill to use a closed-loop, zero-discharge water utilization system similar to one operating in a pulp mill in Norway, and for monetary damages.
Geography for potential class membership included all road system waterfront and islands in Sitka Sound, and eventual members of the class were mainly residents in the southern portion, of course.
The litigation process was eventful. A month after filing the suit, APC announced that complying with a new water quality permit would cost $104 million plus $33 million in extra annual operating expenses. In April 1993, Sen. Robin Taylor, who had Sitka in his district, filed a bill to ban tort suits over entities that have state-issued permits, and to retroactively preempt my lawsuit.
Taylor’s attempt, which eventually did become law, but had garnered opposing editorials by the Juneau Empire and the Anchorage Daily News, and opposition by a former Alaska attorney general and timber industry attorney. In the end, in September 1994, through litigation by my attorneys, Judge Weeks found that law unconstitutional.
Also, in 1994 our litigation pierced the “corporate veil,” in a court order that added APC’s parent company, APC, Ltd. in Tokyo, as a co-defendant. And in mid-September 1994, the court moved the venue for the six-week trial from Sitka to Juneau, in order ensure an impartial jury.
We settled the suit soon after that. My attorneys advocated doing this because, firstly, with the mill closed the pollution was ended. Secondly, establishing the permanent charitable trust provided some monetary compensation to Sitkans, class members among them. We were confident of winning the suit; however, we feared the mill would declare bankruptcy and that class members would be at the tail end of creditors, and in the end receive nothing. The settlement but endowing the trustwas in the front of the line.
At the end of 2021, the Permanent Charitable Trust’s endowment stood at over $2.6 million and it continues to benefit our community through its annual grants.
Larry Edwards, Sitka
