Tepee burner kaput – one of Missoula’s last
Anaconda’s Tepee Shuts Down Today
Bonner residents will be getting cleaner air after Saturday with the closure of the last remaining tepee burner at the Anaconda Forest Products Co.’s Bonner mill.
Robert Sheridan, plant manager, said Friday that Saturday will be the last day ever for the tepee burner. It is being replaced with a high-temperature boiler which will burn wood wastes to produce steam.
The boiler is in the final stages of installation. Sheridan said it would be fired sometime next week to bake it out, a process which will take four or five days.
After that, it will take “some days” to get all the controls adjusted, he said.
Anaconda Forest Products will close for two weeks beginning Sunday for vacations, mill repairs and conversion to the boiler. The mill normally closes for vacations in July or August, but Sheridan said the schedule is being advanced this year because of the boiler installation.
The boiler is guaranteed to be emission-free and will produce 200,000 pounds of steam per hour, he said.
The tepee burner will be converted to a storage bin for the wood waste “hog fuel” burned in the boiler. A smaller Anaconda tepee burner was torn down by the company on Earth Day in April.
Elimination of the Anaconda tepee burner will bring to four the number of active tepee burners in the Missoula Area.
The above article appeared in The Missoulian on June 6, 1970.
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