What was the role of a water quality analyst at Belgo?

Interview with Réjean Loranger, a retired Belgo employee. 

Text on screen:  What was the role of a water quality analyst at Belgo? 

Close-up of Mr. Réjean Loranger.  Text on screen: Réjean Loranger, retired Belgo employee.

Réjean Loranger: We’d get up at six in the morning, we’d eat, we’d have breakfast… (laughing). Well, seriously now, yes, the work was fairly routine, there were the samples that had to be sorted out. As a water quality analyst, I had to go around to different sampling points, remove the quantities of suspended materials—the suspended solids—from the samples.

Images follow one another while Mr. Loranger continues to speak. The first image shows an aerial view of the mill complex, including the huge pile of logs and floating wood on the nearby river. The second image shows the transportation of a large quantity of logs by heavy machinery, and the third image shows an employee taking a pulp sample from a machine inside the mill. 

Back to Mr. Loranger’s close-up.

Réjean Loranger: When I started working, we were discharging a hundred tons of solids a day, mainly wood fiber. When I finished working for the water treatment department, department, we were discharging a hundred kilos of solids per day. Do the math.

Images follow one another while Mr. Loranger continues to speak. The first image shows logs surrounded by booms floating in the Shawinigan Bay. The second image shows workers, buried in a thick layer of silt, picking up logs on the riverbank. 

Back to Mr. Loranger’s close-up.

Réjean Loranger: Between 1990 and 1995, the Shawinigan Bay was cleaned up, and nearly three metres of solids were removed from the bottom of the river.

Images follow one another while Mr. Loranger continues to speak. The first image, in black and white, shows an old papermaking machine, while the second image, in colour, shows a more modern version of this type of machine. A worker who looks tiny next to the machine, which shows the immensity of the machine. In the following two images, workers are shown handling very large rolls of paper using different machines. 

Back to Mr. Loranger’s close-up.

Réjean Loranger: But you have to take into account that this accumulation went on for almost a century. Even today, we still hear comments that paper mills pollute pollute pollute, but compared to before, it’s a 99.9% improvement. That’s what made me love my job: my work.