Special Report No. 78-04: A Survey of Pulp and Paper Industry Environmental Protection Expenditures – 1977

  The attached special report summarizes the findings of the National Council's survey of industry environmental expenditures during 1977, which was conducted during the first half of 1978. Based on questionnaire information solicited at the corporate level, it also contains projections of capital expenditures planned for 1978. All such capital expenditures are categorized for report purposes among air and water quality protection and solid waste management at the point of primary pulp and paper manufacture. The report itself addresses a number of questions related to the magnitude of such expenditures. With regard to industry environmental protection capital expenditures, it differentiates the total 1977 expenditures of $443 million among the three environmental protection areas mentioned earlier. It then subdivides those for water quality protection along internal process loss control and external effluent management lines. This is the first year in the past six that environmental protection expenditures have represented less than 29 percent of the total capital expenditures, being 19 percent in 1977 in the primary industry section involving pulp and paper manufacture. For the fifth year the survey addressed the question of the extent to which special amortization, tax relief and financing methods have been employed to assist in financing this extensive capital expenditures program for environmental protection. Tax exempt bonds were estimated to have been employed in financing as much as $102 million. This is approximately 30 percent of the total, somewhat less than the 44 percent reported in 1976. This is the sixth year that the expenditures survey was conducted on a corporate basis. A simplified procedure and data analysis methodology will again be employed in early 1979 to expedite the development of similar survey data for 1978.