Jun 09, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. Celulosa Arauco y Constitucion SA will shut down immediately its Valdivia wood pulp plant until the environmental and legal scandal surrounding it is resolved, Celco President Alberto Etchegaray said Wednesday in a press conference. Etchegaray added that he hoped the controversy could be resolved in a relatively brief period. The company, one of the world's three biggest wood pulp producers, also fired Chief Executive Alejandro Perez. The Valdivia plant has come under fire because of environmental groups blame it for poisoning a national park, killing hundreds of swans. The pulp maker's situation is "very serious and very complex," Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said during a public appearance Monday. Early last week, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a group of environmentalists seeking a plant shutdown. The ruling, however, came under fire late last week after Celco admitted to mistakenly attributing to a regional university a study submitted as evidence. Celco, in a statement Friday, said it inadvertently named Universidad de Concepcion as authoring a study its Valdivia plant staff conducted. The high court rectified the error and said Friday it didn't affect its ruling in favor of the Valdivia plant. "What's at stake here is the country's credibility, not only with regards to the company, but also in relation to the forestry industry," the president said. Celco's legal advisors resigned Tuesday following Lagos' statements. A study by Universidad Austral de Chile published in April linked the plant to the death of the swans, as environmentalists had claimed for months. It blamed the Valdivia plant upstream of the Carlos Anwandter park for poisoning the food chain, leading to the deaths of the swans. A separate study published recently, and paid for by the pulp maker, refuted the Universidad Austral's findings. The regional environmental commission for the Tenth region, where the plant is located, last month ruled the plant could continue operating as long as it reduced its capacity to 440,000 metric tons of pulp a year and modified its wastewater flows. The regulator shut down the $1.05 billion plant in mid-January for breaking environmental regulations, but allowed it to re-open a few weeks later. The Valdivia plant launched operations in February 2004 with a planned capacity of 550,000 tons of bleached wood pulp a year. High prices for pulp along with other commodities have helped drive Chile's export boom.