Longview, WA

In Longview, WA, the two sites chosen for this project can both be traced back to the original local industrial activity. The first site, currently owned by the Northern Pacific Paper Company (NORPAC,) is located at 3001 Industrial way, Longview, WA. This paper and pulp mill was originally opened by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in 1939 after the establishment of their sawmill in 1929, which was the largest sawmill in the world at the time. The Weyerhaeuser Timber CO. boasted one of the largest private timber holdings in the world, with their assets scattered between the US and Canada. 

Weyerhaeuser merged with Plum Creek Timber Co. in 2016, the same year they sold the historic longview paper and pulp mill site to NORPAC. NORPAC is owned by One Rock Capital Partners LLC. The second focus site is the Longview kraft pulp, paper mill, and box plant currently owned by the Westrock packaging Company. The site originated as the Longview Fibre Company’s pulp mill, which they opened in 1927 to utilize the douglas fir waste wood from the Long Bell Lumber co. sawmill. Longview Fibre Co. owned and operated the mill all the way until 2007, when it was purchased by Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, who sold the mill to KapStone in 2013. The mill was then bought by WestRock in 2018. WestRock still owns the mill, but the company merged with Smurfit Kappa in 2024 to become Smurfit Westrock. 

Longview, Washington, is a city conceived, planned, and constructed for the purpose of supporting an industrial workforce. Although the first settlers arrived in 1849 along the Cowlitz River to found Monticello, the site of the Washington statehood convention, the real establishment of Longview can be attributed to private funding from timber baron R.J. Long of the Long Bell Lumber Company. By 1918, S.M Morris and R.J Long, leaders of the Long-Bell Lumber Company based in Kansas City, Missouri, had depleted their timberland holdings and began searching for new timberlands to buy up. In 1921, Chief Engineer Wesley Vandercook was sent to nearby Kelso, WA to survey the area but determined that Kelso could not support the estimated 14,000 workers needed for Long-Bell’s proposed lumber mill operations. Consequently, R.A Long purchased nearly 14,000 acres of flat land along the Cowlitz River valley in 1922 for the purpose of building a new mill town. The city was officially dedicated in 1923 and incorporated with a municipal government in 1924. The name "Longview" was chosen in honor of R.A. Long’s 1,600-acre horse farm in Lees Summit, Missouri. From the beginning, it was planned as an industry town that integrated facilities for families and industries together. 

The city was designed as a fully functioning two-mill town with the ability to support all mill workers, their families, and supporting industries, amounting to around 75,000 people. It was chosen for the rich fir timberlands that surrounded it and the ease of export by water to national and international interests. Later, its export connections grew via freeway, railroad, and air, further bolstered by the construction of the Longview, Portland, and Northern Railroad (LP&N), which connected the mills to the Union Pacific line at Vader and even provided passenger service starting in 1928. 

Longview’s economy rapidly grew as major corporations established operations there. Built in 1925, the Pacific Straw Board and Paper Company produced pulp for paper and cardboard. The Longview Fibre Company, established in 1927, moved to the location because of the opportunity presented by waste produced by the Longbell Lumber Co. mills. Longview Fibre Co. manufactured kraft paper, shipping materials, and linerboard at a major facility at the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers. Also tied to the Longview Lumber Co., the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company moved in and started three sawmills by 1925. Their business was salvaging timber and producing pulp, Presto Logs, plywood, paper bleach, and smokeless gunpowder for the war. Postwar, they switched their emphasis to producing fine paper and chlorine. In 1940, the Reynolds Metals Company, which was at the time the largest aluminum manufacturer in the US, opened an aluminum smelter powered by hydropower, later sold to the Aluminum Company of America in 2000 and eventually closed by Longview Aluminum. By 1956 after the old-growth fir and cedar had been depleted, the International Paper Company acquired all remaining holdings of Long-Bell Lumber and renamed it IP-Long-Bell. 

Despite the exhaustion of local resources, Longview remained a major manufacturing hub. Pulp, paper, and wood products remained Longview’s dominant industries into 2008, with healthcare becoming a strong secondary sector. Weyerhaeuser and Longview Fibre were the city's largest employers at the time, together providing jobs for around 3,600 workers. Today, Longview, WA supports a population of almost 39,000, and the industry is still centered around the lumber for which it was founded.

Major sources of contamination along the Columbia River in Longview include logging, wastewater treatment, and industrial sites such as the various paper mills on Industrial Way. In total, there are 56 permitted dischargers allowed to discharge a limited amount of various contaminants into the Columbia River. Of these 56, 40 dischargers have violations identified by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A notable discharger, North Pacific Paper Company LLC (NORPAC), is currently listed as being in Significant/Category I Noncompliance and their permit meant to expire 12/31/2025 has been terminated in result. But this isn’t their first violation, in February 2022, the company was fined $68,000 by the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) for failure to monitor and properly treat its stormwater and wastewater after failing 71 times to meet pollution limits between April 2020 and November 2021.

WestRock Longview, previously known at Longview Fibre Co., was also recently found to be noncompliant for failure to monitor and treat stormwater. While they have not yet been issued a fine, they have received a written notice of violation as of April 2025. Additionally, back in September 2024, reports of an odor described to smell like burning rubber that traveled as far as Portland OR were received by the Cowlitz County 911. People in the area reported that the odor caused itchy eyes, headaches, and sore throats. Ecology and the EPA suspected WestRock as the source of the odor. Two days after, Ecology and the EPA came to Longview to conduct tests and found the odor was not “dangerous”. It is also suspected that WestRock may be exposing workers to hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, after two employees went to the emergency room for suspected exposure.

Weyerhaeuser Co., another permitted discharger, is known to discharge pollutants such as dioxins, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and toxic inorganics. But these aren’t the only issues; in addition to NORPAC’s fine in 2022, Ecology issued Weyerhaeuser a $40,000 fine for water quality violations. The company failed 42 times to meet pollution limits between October 2020 and November 2021. Since then, another fine was issued for $145,000 for similar water quality violations as well as being above permitted limits for solids and metals.

The many pulp and paper mills in Longview have been named as the leading contributors in Washington that have brought the Columbia River to the top of the list for U.S. water receiving the most carcinogens with roughly 1.76 million pounds, mostly in the form of chloroform. Pulp and paper mills also make up roughly half of all toxic releases within Washington state with chemicals such as sulfuric acid, ammonia, chlorine, and methanol. Many sources of contamination can come from a single mill such as solid waste from deinking, pulping processes, and wastewater treatment, as well as liquid and gas waste.

Contaminated waters in the Columbia River result in harm to the fish populations in the river, including endangered salmon that rely on this habitat for spawning and rearing. But this isn’t the only issue regarding fish, there are also advisories along sections of the Columbia River not to eat certain fish as they contain contaminants like PCBs and mercury that accumulate in their fat.

Indigenous tribes in the area are at greater risk of cancer and other health issues according to a fish contaminant survey conducted by the Columbia River Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC). Due to their long-term consumption of local fish, it was found that adult tribal members that frequently consumed fish over a 70-year period are at higher risk of cancer by as much as 50 times more than the general public.

With regards to pulp and paper mill pollution, the gases and solids wastes can cause wheezing, headaches, nausea, and chronic disorder and children are especially vulnerable.  

The demographics of Longview reflect its smaller size at around 40,000 people living in the city. The largest demographic in Longview representing around 90% of its population is White. When the city was first founded, its main purpose was to serve the Long-Bell lumber company, its position along the Columbia River gave ample access for loading timber to send down the coast to mills. Over the years, especially after the second world war, the town grew to its current size. Demographically the town is majority Caucasian with a small Asian, African American, Hispanic and Latino population. 

The industrial businesses in Longview are major employers in the local job market. Different from Tacoma, whose larger size offers a wider variety of jobs in its region. Norpac and Westrock are two of the large employers. This dynamic has shifted how the people of Longview see the impacts of the MOTCA sites versus how the people of Tacoma view the pollution and cleanup of Commencement Bay.