Word has come from International Paper that it finally will shutdown its only chemical cellulose (dissolving pulp) mill in Natchez, Miss., in June or July. Struggling with a new but shaky lease on life for the past year, the announcement had to be a stinging blow to the city of Natchez and Adams County, though it's hard to believe the community wasn't half expecting the bomb that exploded on its doorstep January 24.
At one time, when I worked there in the late 1970s, The Natchez mill was the largest private employer in Adams County, and probably still is. It currently employs some 600 people, down from the 1,000 or so when I was there (nearly 150 were laid off in the fall of 2001). Hundreds more are indirectly employed by the operations, with logging companies, pulpwood dealers, suppliers/vendors, and equipment-service companies.
IP had put the Natchez mill up for sale in June 2000. With no viable suitors, layoffs began in October the following year, and finally the company took it off the market in February 2002. At that time, IP said it would discontinue efforts to divest its chemical cellulose business and would be keeping the mill under its corporate wing. There was talk of a "turnaround plan" already underway and hopes for "satisfactory business results.".
Pipe dreams. Although IP has invested in the 52-year-old Natchez mill over the years, and has modified the product structure to be more flexible and diversified in the marketplace, the mill's epithet was written years ago. It took a nasty, painful, persistently destructive economy to finally drag it down, though not without a struggle.
Plusses and Minuses
When a mill like Natchez falls, suffering begins immediately in the community. Some sources are forecasting an overall $1 billion negative economic impact on the Miss-Lou—Adams County and Concordia Parish across the Mississippi River in Louisiana. A Mississippi State University study shows $183 million in sales being pulled from state, local, and national economies due to the closure, with a $109.8-million direct hit on Adams County.
The IP mill supported a $33 million annual payroll that began drying up last month with a phased shutdown leading toward closure this summer. According to the Mississippi State study, annual sales tax revenues from IP employee spending yielded $1.6 million last year, with $291,062 going directly to Natchez.
The drop in overall county tax revenues (the mill also paid some $632,000 in property taxes last year) will especially hurt an already struggling Natchez-Adams County school system. Charitable operations will also feel the pinch. Last year, workers at the mill pledged $43,506 to United Way, which IP matched with a $26,104 donation. This $69,609 contribution represents about $2 for every man, woman, and child in Adams County.
Businesses from fast food to grocery and furniture stores will begin feeling the closure as unemployment and dislocated worker services benefits began running out for former Natchez mill employees. Natchez Under the Hill and catfish houses on the Louisiana side of the river will certainly feel it, especially on weekend evenings in the summer.
But of course there will be a few plusses accompanying the closure. The long-expressed wish of organizers that the mill's repugnant odors would magically disappear during the community's annual spring Pilgrimage (tour of area antebellum mansions, ballroom dances, etc) will finally come true. Traffic (what little there is) in Natchez should flow smoother with no pulpwood trucks on the roads. And Rayonier (the mill's biggest competitor) will be much healthier and happier come fall.
The Future
Natchez leaders are quick to point out that this oldest continuous settlement on the Mississippi River has faced adversity in the past, and emerged the better for it each time. Campaigns have already been mounted to somehow save the mill through an employee buyout, or whatever. But don't hold your breath on that one. People holding their breaths in Mobile, Ala., Moss Point, Miss., Bellingham, Wash., and St. Mary's, Ga., turned purple a long time ago.
Maybe the state could offer a yet-unidentified buyer (with captive markets in its back pocket) some handsome incentives. It reportedly gave Nissan $300 million to build a new plant in Madison County, and $60 million worth of incentive to Howard Industries.
Probably the best plan of action, however, is to seek new industries and businesses in the area. A new Belgian chemical company is building a plant in Natchez that will hire 40 people. A lumber company expansion will bring in 15 more jobs. Other possibilities look even more promising.
The problem is that average salaries for these and other replacement jobs will be, at best, two-thirds (probably half) of what they were at the mill, where many employees have worked most of their lives. It will take a long time and a lot of replacement jobs for the community to climb out of the hole where the Natchez Mill used to be. No matter how you look at it right now, the Miss-Lou loses. But its future can only get brighter. It can't get more dismal than it currently is…can it?
Here's to you, Shorty Dahlgren, and the Natchez Mousketeers, wherever you are.
