By Nick Worth The “trickle down” effect of the impending Catalyst Paper Mill closure will involve more job losses than just the 308 employees of the Snowflake paper mill and the Apache Railroad, said Catalyst spokesperson Lynn Brown. “The spinoff economic activity from that mill is about $140 million,” said Brown. “That is a significant impact, and clearly it touches employees, families and the community in more ways than just the 308 Catalyst employees. “We’ve turned every stone and the folks at the Snowflake mill worked tirelessly to turn things around,” she said, adding that market conditions made it impossible to keep the mill open. “Even if we had been able to break even we would have kept it going,” she said. One local business that will be severely impacted by the shutdown is C.R. Smith Trucking. “Basically, it will put us out of business,” said company owner Charlie Smith. He said 75 to 80 percent of C.R. Smith’s outbound freight and 100 percent of its inbound freight is gener-ated by the paper mill. Such was the volume of the paper mill traffic that Smith said he invested approximately $500,000 in 10 “walking floor” self-unloading semi trailers to haul loads of loose newspapers to the mill. Smith said Catalyst has always treated his company fairly. He lays the blame of the closure on the gov-ernment’s mandate for paper mills to go to 100-percent recycled content instead of using wood fibers. Smith said currently he has 22 employees, 14 of whom are truck drivers. The rest are mechanic and office help. He has been actively looking for new loads since he heard the news of the shutdown, but noted that there is not a lot of freight business in this area. “We can find a few things we can do, but certainly not in the volume we’re doing right now,” he said. “We don’t know what we’re going to do.” Brown said Catalyst would be working to ease the transition for its suppliers. “We’re meeting with our suppliers to advise them of the situation,” she said. “Where we can continue to do business with them, we will.”