In Finland's southeastern industrial town of Joutseno, where one in two people live off the pulp mills, residents say they can't fathom the Argentinian opposition to the construction of a mill on the Uruguayan side of the river that divides the two South American countries.

"We all need paper, somebody has to make it!," says 88-year-old Arvo Rasimus, a local vegetable farmer.

Argentinians fear the chlorine bleaching process at the planned mill will cause both environmental and health problems and hurt the region's lucrative tourism industry.

In Joutseno, where one of the two mills is run by the Finnish company Botnia, which is building the disputed mill straddling the Uruguayan River, there are no such concerns.

"People are healthy and not worried about it. They think the mills are important for economic reasons. Most of them work for them," Pekka Keraenen, a local doctor, told AFP.

Botnia is the largest private employer in Joutseno, and has one of the biggest production facilities in Finland -- a massive structure of pipes and smokestacks sitting on the shores of Saimaa lake, just a few miles from the Russian border.

Of the town's 11,000 inhabitants, some 5,000 or more are employed by the mills, their subcontractors or suppliers.

The paper mills have had a vast influence on the town. The residential neighbourhood by the Botnia mill is named "Pulp", and the presence of the workers and their families has enabled the area to open a school.

The schoolyard is located a stone's throw from the tanks where woodchips are being cooked and bleached, and the Lappeenranta airport, Finland's oldest, would go out of business if it weren't for the mills.

"The mills have been a source of security and 'bread' and welfare," said Riitta Hakoma, a local social worker, stressing that alcoholism and solitude among workers are the biggest social concerns in the town.

The region is isolated in the wilderness, with dense evergreen and birch forests populated by moose, bears and wolves. In summertime, tens of thousands of ecotourists flock to the region.

Yet Finns are not put off by the sight of the mills, with their smokestacks rising 150 meters into the sky. On the contrary, the mills have been around for so long that they are now a part of the landscape.

The Botnia mill was built by Norwegians in 1908.

Modernised in the 1990s, it spews thick smoke into the air and treated water into the lake.

The smell of the pulp is strong, acrid. Matti Toivonen, a young production engineer, smiles and says, tongue-in-cheek: "I don't smell anything."

"The waste from the smokestacks is made up of more than 99 percent water," he says. The rest is residue from sulphur, phosphorus and other chemicals.

He pulls out a report card on the quality of the water in the Saimaa lake: "excellent" almost everywhere, "good" near the mill.

"There is an impact, but it's negligible," he insists.

To prove his point, he notes that people fish trout in the lake, a species that is particularly sensitive to pollution.

And no one here can recall a single accident caused by the mills. Pekka Keraenen remembers only "minor accidents", such as gas leaks and workers receiving electrical shocks.

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