Paper Industry California

The two pulp mills on Humboldt Bay may be old, ugly and smell bad, but they provide hundreds of jobs in a rural, job-starved economy. Those nose-wrinkling odors fuming from the tall smokestacks are "the smell of money," according to the mills' defenders. And any threat to the mills stirs a lot of anxiety here on California's rugged northern coast. When local environmentalists attacked the sulfurous fumes, the controversy quickly polarized the communities around the storm-swept bay.

The two pulp mills on Humboldt Bay may be old, ugly and smell bad, but they provide hundreds of jobs in a rural, job-starved economy. Those nose-wrinkling odors fuming from the tall smokestacks are "the smell of money," according to the mills' defenders. And any threat to the mills stirs a lot of anxiety here on California's rugged northern coast. When local environmentalists attacked the sulfurous fumes, the controversy quickly polarized the communities around the storm-swept bay.