JaK. 2, 1904.1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
9 
All Commauhications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
The Game Laws in Brief. 
is the standard authority of fish and game laws of the United 
States and Canada. It tells everything and gives it correctly. 
See in advertising pages list of some of the dealers who handle 
the Brief. ' 
Lake Champlain Pollution Refuted. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Your letter received asking my opinion regarding the 
published statements of the pollution of Lake Champlain 
by the pulp mills. 
I would 4ay emphatically that as regards our section 
of the lake near Esse.x, the statements are absolutely false, 
and, as far :as my observation goes, grossly exaggerated 
and misleading as applied to any part of the lake. There 
is sufficient evidence to show, at least for residents cf 
this section, that the matter is prompted by personal 
spite. As a property owner and a lover of our beautiful 
lake, I feel that an irreparable personal injury has been 
done me, and while hesitating to express myself as 
opposed to any action, however mistakenly taken with an 
honest view of abating an evil, my patience has at last 
come to an end, and I can no longer keep silent in the 
face of a wilful perversion of facts. 
Mr. Hatch's press bureau has circulated duplicate news- 
paper reports all over the country to the effect that Lake 
Champlain is a cesspool filled with dead fish and exhaling 
miasmatic vapors. In the current Forest and Stream 
he goes so far as to say that fears are entertained of an 
epidemic of typhoid fever, and the reporter he has paid to 
furnish his material gives this statement as a result of 
Mr. Hatch's personal observation. 
It is a difficult matter to disprove a lie of the charactei 
which Mr.: Hatch and an associate who is not named in 
the dispatches have originated. In a general way I will 
say that wWle the .shallower extremities of Lake Cham- 
plain are bordered by clay banks and muddy when the 
water is agitated by winds, the central portion is very 
deep and clear. The shores near Essex are sandy or 
rocky, and -the water is so clear that objects may be seen 
upon the bottom at any depth which a man may reach by 
' diving. 
The shores are not covered with slime, and I never 
saw a cleaner body of water. Virgin wilderness lakes 
have a great deal more vegetable matter on the shores 
than Lake Champlain in the vicinity of Essex or Wells- 
boro, where the pup mill which interests Mr. Hatch in 
particular is located. I say "in particular" (to digress 
a moment) for he has only brought in the Au Sable inills 
in an effort to give strength to his arraignment. Of the 
Au Sable section I have no personal knowledge. The 
mills there are sulphide mills, while the mill at Willsboro 
is a soda mill using only lime and soda in its process. 
Not only is the lake water pure, but it is particularly 
palatable, and it is used by many of the residents of the 
kke shore and of Essex village in preference to other 
water as drinking water. Dr. Sweatt, our local physician, 
told me once that in all his practice, which has covered 
a period of ^ years, he had never had a case of typhoid 
among families taking their water from the lake. He 
considers it the safest general source of supply, and in 
this his opinion has been corroborated by Dr. Benjamin 
Lee, President of the State Board of Health of Penn- 
sylvania. • 
Mr. Hatch has stated that the lake was covered with 
dead fish. I asked the Rev. Dr. Richardson, a summer 
visitor who was on the lake fishing every day last sum- 
mer, if he had seen any dead fish, and he told me he had 
not seen One. Dr. Barton, of Willsboro, a man of char- 
acter and a good sportsman, tells me there are bass in the 
Boquet River directly below the pulp mill, and I am told 
pickerel are speared contrary to law each spring at this 
point. Dr. Barton's son made some remarkably good 
catches last summer trolling near the mouth of the 
Boquet. 
Mr. Hatch says the fishing in Lake Champlain has been 
ruined, but the facts of the case are that last summer was 
the best angling season we have had in recent years. 
Illegal seining is not common in our section now, and 
when the Missisquoi Bay netting of spawning pike is 
stopped the lake will be one of the best fresh water fish- 
ing grounds available anywhere. Anyone who knows 
anything about the fishing in the lake will bear me out 
when I say that the fishing is steadily improving. 
If the pulp mill at Willsboro is committing a nuisance, 
I should be heartily in favor of any intelligent action to 
abate it, but the observable facts do not indicate that such 
is the case. I have never visited the pulp mill in ques- 
tion, and I have no love for pulp mills in general, and no 
desire to pose as a champion of their cause, but my hon- 
est indignation 'has been aroused by the malicious false- 
hoods circulated in the above referred to reports, and as 
a man would .resent an insult to the good name of a 
woman, so I register my emphatic protest against the 
false and defamatory attack on our fair lake. 
John B. Burnham. 
The press; biat-eau conducted by Edward Hatch, Jr.. 
and another in'the interest of their warfare on the pulp ■; 
mill at Hillsboro, has hesitated at no extreme in what 
has become a ^defamation of Lake Champlain and a 
personal insult to every resident of this section. Not 
only has their bureau misrepresented actual conditions 
and suppi-essedj material proffered in the interests of 
cotrimon honesty, but it has mischievously tampered 
with statements given in interviews and twisted them 
to suit its personal ends. 
The history-of the case is remarkable, as illustrating 
the way in which a good cause may be perverted. Sev- 
eral years ago'; the sympathy of many persons would 
have been witji, the contestants. The pulp mill was 
then "discharging, its entire waste product into the 
Boquet River, attd no l6ver of the lake and no sports- 
n couj^ yiew "the rnatter with ooinplajs#r>cf . 
Even then, however, there was not a tenth part of the 
nuisance which Hatch and his associate have pictured 
as existing at the present time. 
The mill is situated some little distance up the 
Boquet River from Lake Champlain, and the lake is 
here three or four miles in width and upward of 400 
feet in depth. A little to the north, in vvhich direction 
the current runs, the lake attains a width of fifteen 
miles. It is a large body of water aerated by the 
winds and purified by the sunlight, and as the mill at 
Willsboro was not a large one, the discharge was not 
of much consequence, aside from driving the fish out 
out of the river itself. 
At this time I remember driving on one occasion 
to Noble's Park at the mouth of the Boquet. An 
odor from the river water was noticeable, but the sand 
beach there was and is one of the prettiest and clean- 
est beaches on the lake, and it has been and is a fav- 
orite" bathing place. At this time, I am told, the mill 
had an agreement with the Forest, Fish and Game 
Commission to keep its waste out of the river for sixty 
days each spring at the time the fish were running. 
The Boquet is about forty miles in length, but owing 
to the high dams and falls along its course, has not 
of recent years been much of a snawning stream for 
lake fish — and this statement applies previous to the 
coming of the pulp mill. No fish at any time ever 
ran above the high falls at Wadham's mills, where a 
47-foot power is now being developed for electrical 
purposes, and only trout are found on the principal 
length of the river. 
The facts of the case appear to have been that the 
damage done by the pulp mill at its most objectionable 
period, as far as the fish were concerned, applied only 
to about two miles of stream, and not at all to the lake. 
One other fact, however, deserves attention. At 
times there were large amounts of slaked lime, or the 
water from the slaked lime emptied into the river at 
once, and this undoubtedly resulted in a considerable 
fish mortality. I have been told that at such times 
the shore of the lake near the mouth of the river was 
covered with dead fish, but this fact, and the odor from 
the water of the river itself are the only facts, so far 
as I have been able to ascertain, that ever obtained 
to substantiate the case of Mr. Hatch and his asso- 
ciate. And it must be borne in mind that all this oc- 
curred several years previously to their giving pub- 
licity to their statements regarding the so-called con- 
tamination of Lake Champlain; also that it is not 
shown that the fish were killed in the lake itself. No 
dead fish, as far as I can find out, were ever found in 
the neighborhood of Essex. 
Within the past two years the pulp mill has taken 
energetic steps to stop the nuisance which I have de- 
scribed. This may have been due to pressure brought 
by the State Forest, Fish and Game Commissioners, 
or to other sources. The late State Fish Culturist, 
Mr. A. Nelson Cheney, visited the mill at various 
times. Also there was a sentiment aroused that the 
mill should keep its waste out of the river. Moreover, 
the gentleman, who is, I believe, president of the mill, 
has a summer camp near the mouth of Boquet. What- 
ever the reasons may have beei\ and wether they were 
public spirited or selfish, the fact remains that in the 
summer of 1901 a reservoir was begun to contain all 
the waste product of the mill. This reservoir has 
since been enlarged and improved. 
I was acquainted with these facts when Forest and 
Stream wrote last week, asking for particulars regard- 
ing the purported pollution, but as I had never visited 
the pulp mill, and had no specific information with re- 
gard to it, I determined to make an investigation on 
the ground, and with this object in view I visited the 
mill yesterday. The following is the result of my ob- 
servation and of the statement given me by Mr. R. 
L. P. Mason, superintendent of the mill: 
The mill is a soda mill and the waste not of the same 
oft'eiisive nature of the sulphide mills. The chemicals 
used are carbonate of soda, which is the same sub- 
stance (though not so highly refined) as used in bak- 
ing powders, unslaked (or caustic) lime, and (for 
bleaching) chloride of lime. Alum is also used for 
purifying the water to be mixed with the pulp. 
According to the statement of Mr. Mason, which, as 
far as I could ascertain, was verified by facts, the 
bleaching element and the soda were entirely recov- 
ered, and the sole waste of the mill, in addition to the 
charred gummy part of the wood, consisted of a small 
amount of lime water. . This waste was run into the 
reservoir, of which I shall have more to say later on. 
The process used in the mill is briefly as follows: 
The basis used 'for making the pulp stock is peeled 
cordwood, sticks of popple and basswood, fed into a 
machine which slices them' up into chips with the re- 
quired length of fiber. These chips are boiled in large 
boiler iron digesters in a liquor composed of soda and 
lime, and knowti as caustic soda. The effect of the 
process is to disintegrate the gummy, sappy and color- 
ing parts of the, wood called lignin, and to leave the 
fiber, or cellulosfe, which is the part wanted for paper 
making. The lifenin, together with the caustic soda, 
which has taken it up in solution, is washed from the 
cellulose and driined off through the perforated bot- 
toms of vats, arid so perfect is the process that one 
may take the fcellulose, or pulp, in the mouth and 
chew it without being able to detect a trace of the 
soda. 
The caustic sOda, with the lignin in solution, is im- 
mediately treateS to recover the soda, as the same 
soda is used mairty times in extracting the undesirable 
elements of the wood. It is first evaporated to drive 
off, the excess of water, and when reduced to the con- 
sistency of molasses on a cold day. the tarry product 
is fed into huge revolving drums, through which cur- 
rents of flame are projected by drafts forced from 
furnaces, till the material is charred and falls on end- 
less chains in the form of cinders, technically known 
as black ash. 
The lignin has been carbonized and is in this con- 
dition insoluble in water. , As the soda is"" readily 
soluble, it is now a siinple process ta separate and re- 
cover it, and this is accomplished by washing in hot 
water. The lime, which remains after the burning pro- 
P'fss, ^jixfg^ he ^ve4, and this and the lignin passes 
away as waste from the mill, borne along by a small 
stream of hot water. 
When the pulp is mixed with the bleaching agent in 
another building, a process similar in its result is ef- 
fected, and here also the only waste is the lime. 
- The entire waste from the mill passes over the 
Boquet River in a steel trough to the dumping ground 
on the islarid, where William Gilliland, the patentee, 
and a colonizer of Essex county, made his first settle- 
ment. 
The place is no longer an island, as it has been 
dammed and connected with the mainland on the south 
side. An area of ten acres has been inclosed with 
an earth and planked dike, and the black ash and ac- 
companying lime water are directed in tortuous chan- 
nels over the surface by means of weirs, which de- 
flect the direction of the stream, with the object of 
permitting the solid particles to settle and make land. 
The chief constituent in this land-making process is 
naturally the black ash. This material resembles quite 
closely in a general way, coke cinders. It is hard, 
tasteless and odorless, and has been used in 6ther mjlls 
for making arc light carbons. It resembles in ho way 
the slimy miasmatic deposits described by Mr. 
hatch, and which, as a matter of fact, do not exist. 
After running over the extent of the island, the 
liquid passes off into the river from &ny one of sev-^ 
eral gates. Only one of these gates was open at 'the 
time of our visit, and from it was issuing a stream 
of clear water, slightly brownish in color, eight inches 
wide and three and a half in depth. This, we were in- 
formed, was the sole waste from the mill now enter- 
ing the Boquet. Everything else had either been used, 
evaporated, deposited or recovered. 
Mr. Mason stated that the flow at that time was 
about at its maximum, and had I doubted his word 
the evidence of the snow, which had lain on the ground 
for the past two weeks, furnished a strong argument 
in support of his words, as there was nothing to show 
that the water had in that time attained a higher level. 
The size of the stream passing away seemed in gen- 
eral to correspond with the size of the stream entering 
the island, and it did not appear likely that any con- 
siderable amount had backed away. Also, the snow 
was thawing a little, and probably a portion of the 
stream, 3^ by 8 inches, which is said to be contami- 
nating a lake 120 miles in length, was formed by snow 
water. 
Mr. Mason dipped up a glass full of the water and 
gave it to me to taste. It smelled and tasted like lime 
water, and as a practical chemist he stated that it was 
lime water and nothing more. The water was much 
clearer than the water in the neighboring river, and it 
seems incredible that it could have any deleterious 
effect on the volume of the stream, which, I should 
say on that day, was a thousand times as great. The 
trees and bushes on the tract were vigorous and had 
not apparently suffered from the water running by their 
roots. There was a whitish deposit in places on the 
island, and, of course, a considerable accumulation of 
the black ash, none of which, however, had entered the 
river. 
Mr. Mason told me that last spring, during the high 
water, a portion of the bulkhead had been torn out by 
an ice jam, and at this time some of the black ash was 
carried into the river, but no one can question the 
sincerity of the company in their present endeavor, and 
it does not appear likely that such an event will again 
occur. 
From the standpoint of the general observer, I 
should say that of its class, the WiIi;boro mill is a 
model to-day in the care of its waste. 
As far as human consumption is con^ernecl no one 
can accuse lime water of being unwhol^>^i..me, and I 
have evidence to show that in the immediaie neigh- 
borhood of the mouth of the river its t?.ste is uot 
noticeable. 
The wife of the owner of the nearest important camp 
to the mouth of the river, less than half a mile away 
by water and probably not more than half that distance 
in an air line, told me that her family has used the 
water for drinking and cooking purposes for a long 
time, and that she has never noticed anything unpleas- 
ant about the water. 
Others of Mr. Hatch's neighbors on Willsboro 
Point will make similar statements. The wilfully mis- 
leading character of the published articles of Mr. Hatch 
and his associate can, perhaps, better be realized when 
it is stated that of the interviews they have given out 
purporting to substantiate the pollution of Lake Cham- 
plain, near Willsboro, not one is from any of _ these 
two men's neighbors or from any one living in the 
locality condemned. Summer visitors at a distance 
sojourning near clay banks, who have seen the water 
of the lake in their neighborhood roiled by high winds, 
have had their utterances rushed into print as material 
against the pulp mill. The grist that has come to their 
mill has all been turned out in one long string of 
perversions. Under the circumstances it is not strange 
that residents in the neighborhood have lost faith in 
the sincerity of the contestants, while their latest 
canard of a possible typhoid epidemic haa-aEgused uni- 
versal indignation. 
I am told that Mr. Hatch was asked to visit sthe- pulp 
mill and ascertain the facts for himself, and the assur- 
ance was given him that any feasible suggestions he 
might make toward improving the situation would be 
followed. Mr. Hatch did not accept the invitation. 
Neither did he publish the following straightforward 
letter from Dr. Mil ford H. Smith, pastor of the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church of Ballston Spa, written 
Oct. IS, and given me by Mr. Mason, to whom it was 
addressed. 
John B. Buenham, , 
[Copy.] ' _ ■ - ; 
The Superintendent Champlain Fibre Co.j- 1 
Willsborough, N. Y. ■ * 
Dear Sir: 
I am mailing you. under another cover, a marked 
copy of the New York Tribune, containing an in- 
terview with Mr. Ed. Hatch, relative to the contami- 
nation of the waters of Lake Champlain by th? w»stf 
\tq^ the pulp mills. 
