QUINNESEC, MI, April 19, 2010 (Upper Michigans Source ) -Verso Paper in Quinnesec is temporarily shutting down this week. But this is turning out to be a good thing for the plant and the local economy.

The shutdown allows Verso to perform maintenance on tanks, boilers, pumps, and motors...a spring cleaning for the 24 hour, seven day a week operation.

"It's very important especially to the long term security of the mill that we continue to maintain our operations," said Verso Communications Manager Mark Pontti. "We have about a billion and a half dollar investment here and we want to make sure it continues well into the future. So this is preventative maintenance so to speak we do on an annual basis."

Upper Michigan's Source - Verso's temporary outage