Verso Paper is committed to protecting the environment and the health and safety of our employees, contractors and the public by operating our business in a safe and environmentally sustainable manner. This includes meeting or exceeding standards under all environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, preventing pollution and eliminating process excursions at our manufacturing facilities, monitoring and reducing our carbon footprint, and striving for continuous performance improvement.

We will have in place an EHS management system based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act model. This system, which is aligned with the goals and objectives of the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), help us improve our performance in a number of key areas including compliance, data collection and knowledge sharing. This system includes baseline expectations for companywide performance, with related metrics, auditing and reporting mechanisms.

In 2008, we expect the environmental portion of our EHS management system at our four paper mills to be certified to the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard.

Clear lines of accountability and senior management support are key to achieving our continuous EHS improvement goals. Verso Paper’s senior management team sets EHS policy and priorities and provides the necessary resources to implement them. While the leadership teams at our manufacturing facilities have primary responsibility for complying with EHS legal and regulatory requirements, we operate on the principle that EHS excellence is part of every employee’s job and we expect every employee be proactive in achieving it.