Also available in:
The Washington Department of Ecology fined Port Townsend Paper Company $734,000 on Sept. 16, citing improper operation and maintenance of the mill’s wastewater treatment system since the fall of 2025 and other water-quality violations that Ecology says sent more pollution into Port Townsend Bay than the company’s permit allows.
It is the largest penalty Ecology has levied against the Glen Cove mill in years, and it lands on a company that has now drawn five separate water-quality penalties from the state since 2021. A year ago almost to the week, on Sept. 18, 2025, Ecology fined the mill $20,000 for two smaller violations: about 1,000 gallons of condensate released in January 2025 and roughly 114,000 gallons of inadequately treated wastewater discharged that April. This time the number is more than 35 times larger, and the state’s language is sharper — Ecology says the treatment-system problems were not a single accident but a sustained operating failure that ran for the better part of a year before regulators acted.
What Ecology says went wrong
According to the agency’s Sept. 16 notice, the violations centered on how the mill ran its onsite wastewater treatment system rather than any single spill. Ecology says the system was improperly operated and maintained beginning in the fall of 2025, and that the resulting lapses, combined with other water-quality permit violations, increased the volume and concentration of pollution reaching Port Townsend Bay. The mill discharges treated process water into the bay under a state permit that sets limits on what can go in and how the treatment system must be run. Ecology’s finding is that the company fell short of those operating requirements for months, not once.
Port Townsend Paper has 30 days from the notice to pay the $734,000 or appeal it to the Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board, the state body that hears disputes over environmental penalties. Company representatives have signaled they intend to fight it.
The mill’s response
Brian Peterson, speaking for the mill’s parent company, Crown Paper Group, called the penalty “grossly disproportionate” and said the company has invested more than $8 million in wastewater treatment and environmental upgrades at the Glen Cove site in recent years. The company’s position, as reported by OPB, is that public health and the environment were never put at risk by the violations Ecology cited — a direct rebuttal of the state’s framing that the lapses caused real harm to the bay. That $8 million figure is worth sitting with alongside the fine: it shows a company that says it has been investing in fixing exactly the kind of problem Ecology just penalized it for, even as the state’s own history of five penalties since 2021 suggests the investment has not kept pace with what the permit requires.
Why this fine is different
Port Townsend Paper has been fined before — $30,000 for air emissions in 2017, a penalty in December 2022, and the $20,000 water-quality fine last September. What sets the Sept. 16 penalty apart, beyond its size, is Ecology’s description of a treatment system mismanaged for the better part of a year, not a discrete incident with a clear start and end. For a mill that has operated at Glen Cove since 1928 and been through five ownership changes since 1997 — most recently Atlas Holdings’ 2022 acquisition of Crown Paper Group — a sustained failure raises a question residents are now asking out loud: whether current ownership has the systems and staffing to run the plant’s environmental controls day to day, not just respond after Ecology finds a problem.
David Ginsberg, a Port Townsend retiree quoted by OPB, argued the penalty should not be a one-time cost the company simply absorbs, and called for escalating fines if the violations continue. That is the crux of the local debate. A $734,000 fine is real money, but Port Townsend Paper employs roughly 300 people directly and counts more than 300 Jefferson County residents on its payroll company-wide — one of the county’s largest employers by any telling. A penalty that a company that size can appeal and absorb is a different deterrent than one that changes behavior.
What’s next
The 30-day clock on Port Townsend Paper’s payment-or-appeal decision starts from the Sept. 16 notice, putting a decision point in mid-October. If the company appeals to the Pollution Control Hearings Board, the case will play out in a state administrative forum rather than in Jefferson County, and a resolution could take months. Ecology has not said publicly whether it is pursuing additional enforcement beyond the fine, such as tighter permit conditions or more frequent inspections at the bay outfalls.
For a county where the mill’s stack is as much a landmark as the Victorian storefronts uptown, the fine is not an abstract footnote. Port Townsend Bay is the shared water body for the marine trades that built this town’s wooden-boat identity and for the shellfish growers working the county’s tidelands. Ecology’s fine is a statement that the mill fell short of its permit; whether that changes how the plant is run day to day won’t be answered until the appeal, if there is one, plays out — and until residents see whether the next compliance report looks any different from the last five.
Sources: Washington Department of Ecology, The Seattle Times, KIRO 7, OPB
