White liquor, key in Longview implosion, falls through regulatory gaps

White liquor, key in Longview implosion, falls through regulatory gaps

It sounded like a bomb, a succession of two shocking blasts, when in the winter of 1993, a white liquor clarifier tank exploded at an Oregon paper mill. Two pipe fitters lay dead. Neighbors’ homes rattled as debris seemed to fall from the sky.Nearly two decades later, on a spring morning in 2012, four workers were injured by the same chemical compound on the opposite side of the country. A valve ruptured at a South Carolina paper mill, white liq…