Cosmopolis, the ninth most populous city in Grays Harbor County with 1,682 residents, is often overlooked when discussing the politics or business of the day.
Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Ocean Shores seem to get all the attention. With all this recent talk of economic development, recompete studies and health assessments, Cosmopolis could be sitting on an employment and revenue goldmine in the currently moribund Cosmo Specialty Fibers pulp mill. And depending on who you ask, the city just southeast of Aberdeen along the Chehalis River could also be perched on an environmental disaster.
Recently, the Washington State Department of Ecology announced $2.3 million in fines against Cosmo Specialty Fibers for alleged lack of action on leaking hazardous chemicals and said that storage tanks, treatment systems and environmental equipment continue to steadily deteriorate, leading to dangerous conditions and mounting threats to nearby neighborhoods, the Chehalis River and Grays Harbor.
The chairman of Cosmo Specialty Fibers, Richard Bassett, took exception to the press release distributed by the Washington State Department of Ecology when the fines were levied.
“It’s three or four items they’ve raised all at the same time, it’s come more in the form of an attack than an enforcement effort,” Bassett said. “I think the most important thing from our point of view is the U.S. system of checks and balances and that we’ll appeal these fines. And we’ll appeal the decision to put out something as inflammatory as this. This is kind of a continuation of a longer attempt by certain people within various governments to undermine the restart of the Cosmopolis Mill.”
According to Bassett, the mill was on the verge of commencing its restart timeline when the Department of Ecology’s press release dropped.
“Before this press release was issued, we were within 72 hours of completing the financing. I would have expected to (give a specific date) for the restart and that date would have been before November 1 but they have derailed that,” Bassett said.
The pulp mill, as Cosmo Specialty Fibers, has been in intermittent operation since 2011 and shut down in December 2022. According to Bassett, when the mill was acquired from Weyerhaeuser, numerous entities were in support of reopening the facility and were cooperative with that effort in 2010.
“Prior to the (2010 restart) we had a huge amount of cooperation from the municipal government, from the county of Grays Harbor, from the state of Washington and from the federal government. In 2010, we had an enormous amount of cooperation from all levels of government. We brought in about a $1.5 billion in revenue to Grays Harbor County over a number of years, well over $100 million of investment came in, we provided 210 family wage jobs directly, we provided a lot of other economic activity in the area and I think it was a pretty good deal for everybody concerned but things don’t always stay that way.”
According to Bassett, the purpose of a pulp mill is to extract the highest quality purity of cellulose as possible. He said mills had traditionally not done much with the byproducts and waste from the process.
“It was always our idea from the outset to say that a different business model was required here,” Bassett said. “We’ve been looking at doing those things for a long time, adding those downstream businesses. … That combination of businesses takes a lot of investment and takes a lot of people. Our target right from December of 2022 was to restart the pulp mill and begin the development of biomass power, bioethanol, and biochemicals. All-in when that’s done, that would take about a $1 billion of capital and would employ about 1,000 people, not 200, a thousand. This should have been an attractive business. What we found is that in about March of 2024, there were some people in the EPA who, for whatever reason, don’t want to see this mill restarted. They put a number of impediments in our way which we think were unwarranted and we think they’ve acted inappropriately.”
Bassett said he’s confident that the mill will be restarted despite the roadblocks Cosmo Specialty Fibers has encountered so far. He says he has seen a change in tone from Washington, D.C., under the Trump administration.
“There’s a huge change, and from our vantage it’s a huge change for the positive. The new administrator of the EPA has made a big difference in my view, an extremely positive difference,” Bassett said. “Since the end of May, we’ve made significant progress. The EPA had imposed an order on us in March of 2024 which was unjustified, unwarranted and unsupported. We agreed to meet all of the conditions, all we asked that they not continuously move the goalposts, which has been the hallmark of the EPA for decades.”
According to Bassett, these moves from the EPA have prevented the mill from currently being in operation.
“The real goal is to cut off our ability to raise investment. Most people, quite sensibly as investors look and say, ‘do you want to spend the rest of your life fighting with the EPA or the Department of Ecology,’ and the answer is quite reasonably ‘no,’” Bassett said. “But today, there’s only one reason why this mill is not running and that’s the actions of the EPA. This mill should be running and operating today. There are 200 more people in Grays Harbor that should be working there. The mill would be generating at least $3 million a week of revenues coming into Grays Harbor.”
Bassett indicated that the business and revenue from a functioning pulp mill would lead to more short-term and long-term economic prosperity in the region.
“Down the road, five years from now, that number would be much larger, more like $12 million or $13 million a week, a week, not a month or year, a week,” Bassett said. “I think when I’m in Grays Harbor and I look around and I think that would probably benefit the people of Grays Harbor.”
According to Bassett, the pulp mill’s output is used in 300 end products such as screen coatings for smart phones, aspirin, toothpaste, paint and nail polish components, textiles, and other items used in daily life.
Even more recently, Ecology announced that it had negotiated an agreed order with each of the “potentially liable parties,” Cosmo Specialty Fibers and Weyerhaeuser. The agreed orders require Cosmo and Weyerhaeuser to conduct a remedial investigation/feasibility study and draft a cleanup action plan.
“The plan is the same as it’s been the last two and a half years, which is to raise the financial support, the investment support to restart the mill. It’s a non-trivial amount of investment to have it running and to ensure that it’s in regulatory compliance across the broad spectrum of regulation and you don’t do that for $1.99,” Bassett said. “Again, from March of 2024, that has been aggressively undermined by the EPA for no good reason. We’re pretty confident about what’s going to happen in the next four weeks because we have some people that have been considering investment who actually were even more annoyed by the press release than I was. They’re also offended by the actions of the EPA. They’ve lied about me, they’ve lied to me, they’ve threatened me with a criminal prosecution and they’ve misled people in large scale with misleading press release and a certain amount of EPA theater with people running around at the mill for a couple weeks last year in hazmat suits right before they removed a 60-gallon tank of hand sanitizer. At some point the truth comes out.”
Bassett said that reopening the mill would be a boon to the city of Cosmopolis and Grays Harbor County and he’s surprised that anyone would be against this type of investment in the community. He added that the mill could be reopened in short order once investment capital is secured.
“From the date of funding to the restart takes at least 12 weeks. We have to make a range of investment in the mill before it’s suitable, and that costs tens of millions of dollars. That money then goes for certain activities, capital investment in the mill for equipment and a variety of things and it’ll take 12 weeks to execute that. We’ve been ready to go with that, we have a plan, we have 175 projects to complete in that 12-week period. Since we took over the mill we paid out more than $31 million so far to keep this as a viable entity. We’re not some big fund, it’s basically me. If you don’t have an economy growing it’s hard to employ people.”
