Tyrone residents saw smoke blowing from the paper mill for the first time in more than two years over the weekend.
\nThe reopening of the plant has not come without problems. The plant had been closed until late last week when it was finally able to reopen after Tyrone Borough, Blair County Development Corporation and Team Ten were finally able to come to an agreement regarding sewage discharge capacity and assignability.
\nBCDC is the actual owner of the company with Team Ten operating the plant until it can purchase it outright from the owners. That move was made so the project could qualify for government funding.
\nThe dispute over sewage capacity and assignabilty had raged for three months before being settled a week ago today. The mill then continued preparations for actual production after being granted a sewage discharge permit from the borough.
\nTeam Ten LLC President John Ferner announced the first paper rolled through the number four machine early Friday.
\n\u201cI want to thank all the employees that helped ready the mill for production,\u201d Ferner told The Daily Herald on Friday.
\n\u201cWe are extremely happy the mill has reopened,\u201d said Mayor Patricia Stoner. \u201cIt does mean work for the people of Tyrone, it\u2019s a boost to our economy, of course we are thrilled and at the same time the borough has protected its assets.\u201d
\nThe mill is operating 24 hours a day with more than 140 employees already on the job. Eventually the plant will employ around 170 workers.
\nAn unidentified caller to The Daily Herald this morning expressed concerns about the shifts employees work at the mill.
\n\u201cThey are working 12-hour shifts,\u201d said Lori McGovern of the personnel department after being questioned about the shifts at the American Eagle Paper Mill.
\nFerner explained to The Daily Herald the shift policy at the plant includes four crews who are working a different set of schedules throughout the month and includes a period of seven days off once a month.
\nA faxed copy of the plant\u2019s production schedule showed two shifts being worked by four crews.
\nThe daylight shift runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the night shift runs from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The schedule does show each worker receives seven days off once a month in addition to other days off in a given month.
\nIn all cases, regardless of shift or crew, no one is scheduled to work more than four days in a row.
\nOfficials of Team Ten, a group of 12 local businessmen and former managers of the closed mill, announced plans to reopen the mill back in July of this year. The mill had last been in operation in October of 2001 when MeadWestvaco closed operations leaving 265 workers unemployed.
\nThe mill once employed about 1,000 workers before former owners moved major operations to Kentucky back in 1970. The workforce was cut to 300 and almost closed at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tyrone residents saw smoke blowing from the paper mill for the first time in more than two years over the weekend. The reopening of the plant has not come without problems. The plant had been closed until late last week when it was finally able to reopen after Tyrone Borough, Blair County Development Corporation and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}