There were more people than chairs at the Linn Expo Center for the presentation of plans for a new paper plant in Millersburg.
About 120 people showed up at the Linn County Fair and Expo Center to hear about plans for a paper-making plant an Italian company wants to build in Millersburg.
The company, Sofidel, is based in a small town in Tuscany and has operations around the world including the United States.
The site it has in mind for its first factory in the Pacific Northwest is on farm land west of the Portland & Western rail line, between Conser Road and the Willamette River.
The rub is that the property is outside the urban growth boundary of Millersburg and zoned for exclusive farm use. An orchard is there now.
The Millersburg City Council wants to make the land available for industry by doing what it calls a “swap.” It wants to take in and rezone the orchard land, roughly 160 acres, and remove from the boundary a similar-size tract farther south.
At a public hearing on Jan. 24, the Linn County Board of Commissioners heard from farmers opposed to the swap. They said the good farm land occupied by the orchard should not be converted to industry.
The county board kept the record open and said it would decide on the Millersburg land swap on March 7.
At the time of the hearing, Sofidel’s plans were not public knowledge.
On Thursday at the Expo Center, Sofidel’s CEO Luigi Lazzareschi talked about his company and the plans for Millersburg.
The company makes a variety of tissue for commercial customers and home use, including paper towels and toilet paper. It makes its products from pulp produced by others.
The Millersburg plant, set about 700 feet south of Conser Road, would employ 70-90 workers and represent an investment of $200 million. The city is proposing a long linear park between the plant site and the road.
I had read about the scheduled public presentation on Facebook, so I went to take it in. I couldn’t hear most of what was said, but the talk was accompanied by informative slides.
I wondered about emissions, aroma and water use. Millersburg City Manager Kevin Kreitman told me that since the company does not produce pulp, there would be no exhaust stacks and none of the typical paper mill odor.
Kreitman said the plant would seek to aquire industrial water rights on the Willamette River to get the process water it needs. The water then would go into the Millersburg wastewater system, which is connected to Albany and the joint treatment plant.
The Sofidel presentation said the company takes care to protect the environment. For example, it minimizes the use of plastic in wrappings and uses renewable energy to the greatest extent possible.
To learn more about the company, check out Sofidel.com. Or you can contact the company. One of Lazzareschi’s slides gave his personal email and phone number:
Here are the ways that Sofidel can be reached.
How soon any of this comes about, or if it happens at all, will depend largely on how the urban-growth boundary swap comes out, and whether or how far the matter is appealed.
If there are no obstacles, Kreitman expects the Sofidel tissue factory to be going in a couple of years. (hh)
Luigi Lazzareschi showed a plan of the proposed plant site south of Conser Road.
I watched a segment on “Finding your Roots” on PBS some weeks ago.
The featured person finding their roots had ancestors who founded and owned a paper mill in Italy. That company plant is still running and is now part of Sofidel–a world wide enterprise
I do not find it funny that zones are Created for a reason, then Big Money comes along and the County drools over the thought of more money coming into the coffers, to hell with what the zoning plan is, lets just manipulate the law and boundries to put more money in the pot!!
I say NO to this Land swap, they buy land IN the current Zone or NOT at all, which I would prefer, I do not like that USA is dumb enough to allow other countries to own any Land in America!!!
Scott
Point of order
A company from Italy is looking to invest. The country is not involved
I find it refreshing that an “outsider” is willing to invest in manufacturing in the US. The US business model offshores manufacturing
At least they don’t call the company Infidel!
It would be interesting to know how much land is already available zoned industrial. No doubt there is a lot. Is there enough extra room on the old IP site, next to the new container-rail site? Allowing other countries to own land in America is very wrong; unfortunately, the gate has been open for a long time.
The city of Albany plans to cut down 80 trees at Monteith Riverpark for a waterfront project. A mountain near my home southeast of Lebanon is now bare after loggers took every tree. The lumber mill near my home rumbles every day and part of the night transforming trees into stacks of boards. And now, in this article, we read of yet more farmland being put on the chopping block.
People! We need trees. We need farmland. There are billons fewer birds in America now than existed in the 1970s, thanks to our carelessness in search of the almighty dollar. Why do we destroy the land that sustains us?
I agree with this comment. The city and residents of Albany are cutting trees everywhere, no one seems to think that the few trees cut on their street amounts to thousands of trees over time. I suggest changing the Oregon license plate from a Douglas Fir tree to a blackberry shrub because that’s where we’re headed.
We need lumber and jobs. If it’s too loud for you ,move! Ive seen too many families loose everything good they had going due to lumbermill shut down.
So you don’t live in a house built from wood ? Don’t use toilet paper ?
Millersburg City Council needs ousted for this crap.
The old “IP” site is not the correct term. IP owned it for a nano-second in some deal with Weyerhaeuser when Weyerhaueser did the hostile take-over of Willamette Industries in 2002. IP never operated the paper mill, I don’t believe. The Albany paper mill started up in 1955. They (Western Kraft) got their initial plans (Western Kraft later became part of Willamette Ind. when the company went on the stock exchange in 1967) approved by the state of Oregon in mid 1950s before the Albany area part of construction of I-5 got their plans approved. Therefore, the paper mill sneaked in way too close to the freeway and that caused many car accidents and deaths from the smoke plumes before the state DEQ made them put “scrubbers” on the smoke stacks. Also, a large sign used to be across the freeway that lit up when driving was dangerous because of intermingling fog and paper mill smoke. But, maybe the state of Oregon would allow a paper plant, without smoke stacks, to be close to the freeway. If so, it would be a good place to place it, rather than tearing out an orchard.
Great history lesson Cap. I remember traveling I5 when I was a kid and a young man. I always knew that I was near Albany because of the paper mill smell! I could not imagine living in Millersburg in the paper mill days. Now look at it, a big housing boom on all the flat (farm) land. The paper mill was all I identified Albany with in the old days. Now I live there. And by the way, it’s a great place to live.
This mill will not have a pulp mill so there will be effectively no smell
Waste water will be processed by the ALBANY MUNICIPAL SYSTEM? I know that Millersburg municipality uses the Albany system; but, is the system going to large enough to accommodate an unspecified additional amount? If not who is going to pay for a larger system?
You can bet your bottom dollar it won’t be the paper company! It will be put on the City of Albany tax payers.
Let us all create some more service jobs, buy all our products from China, buy all our lumber and paper from Canada, buy all our vegetables from Mexico and Chile, buy all our meat from Australia, continue to bring in 2.5 million illegal immigrants that don’t speak English, and, eventually we will be a third world country which will make all the young people happy plus most of the people posting on this site.
Al very humbling to think this is the way of the world. The Italian company plant that is still running and is now part of Sofidel–a world wide enterprise. That is the magic word- World Wide ( New World Order ) to put things in place and we just are told to accept the way things are because our government is doing what’s best for it’s citizens.
Reply
But what about those high paying J O B s?
Those would be nice!
Why would you think these jobs would be high paying? What about the jobs lost from the competitors, GP? Is there a shortage of toilet paper? Won’t Sofidel be clawing business away from someone else. There is a pulp manufacture in Halsey, Luigi Lazzareschi stated they would not be sourcing any pulp from the Halsey plant or any plant on the west coast. Don’t you think this could cost us jobs?
Those are quite a hodgepodge of varying opinions about Sofidel’s proposal. There is more to be learned before this project is or is not approved. I attended that meeting and from the second row I fleetingly wondered if you would be there. When I saw your write-up I was sorry I didn’t seek you out and say hello, since I’ve enjoyed your work for a long time. You are a gift to the greater Albany area. Thank you.
Hasso —Why does Sofidel need the EFU site rather than an already-available site? Is it proximity to the river?
I’m worried about the river! This seems very sketchy.
We already have enough industry in our neighborhood. Industrial odors and God knows what else. What about the health and welfare of the families here? This all sounds like a bad move and frankly like a bad movie. We all know what this really is….somehow we thought Oregon was a state that loved clean air and trees, boy were we wrong.
Does anyone think this will effect property values? Do we as a community have the correct values when we consider something like this proposal? Bad, bad and stupid. Trickery. No dollar amount is worth quality of life we will be compromising if we let this happen. Our family is not going for this.
We already have enough industry in our neighborhood. Industrial odors and God knows what else. What about the health and welfare of the families here? This all sounds like a bad move and frankly like a bad movie. We all know what this really is….somehow we thought Oregon was a state that loved clean air and trees, boy were we wrong.
Does anyone think this will effect property values? Do we as a community have the correct values when we consider something like this proposal? Bad, bad and stupid. Trickery. No dollar amount is worth quality of life we will be compromising if we let this happen. Our family is not going for this. Lets not “Swap” common sense.
I’m really concerned. We bought a house here because it was quieter and more country but still close to town. One of the concerns I’ve had is will their be noise that takes away from the quiet neighborhoods? That’s one reason we chose this area. Would there ever be something horrible like the stink that this area had before. I hope there’s not changes anymore then that’s already here.
Please no changes! Let Millersburg stay what it is. We don’t need more semi trucks coming through either. No extra noise. Let our area stay the same. They need to go somewhere else. Those orchard trees will take years to be the way they are. Swap with another town. I don’t want the deer or birds or any other animals effected with this either. We purchased a home here for a quiet area with out a smell. Even if this place wouldn’t supposedly have a smell.
Moved to Albany to enjoy a simple, quiet life. Now our local government just wants to take land and build new “communities”. They don’t care about you and I. They only want the increased tax dollars to waste on their frivolous pet projects (that taxpayers don’t care about) and not maintain existing infrastructure (i.e. streets). Such a shame!