|
|
| Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink (18319) | |
 |
|
| Home > OTChat | |
[ Post a New Response | Return to the Index ]
|
| (18319) | |
Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink |
|
|
Posted by Orange Blossom Express on Tue Mar 8 19:45:52 2005 Just a story for those who are curious about other things going on in the world. Nothing different in the story today than what's gone on throughout history. I found it interesting that this was posted two days after I saw all these paper mill areas and companies and after I took some shots of this old paper mill train donated from Georgia PacificTribune Since the link expires after 3 days, here's the story: Old-timers in paper mill towns will tell you that the rotten egg odor belching from the mills' smokestacks ``smells like money.'' Since the 1940s, pulp and paper mills have provided relatively good-paying jobs in otherwise poor, rural Florida counties. Those benefits, however, came at a price. In Palatka, 46 miles south of Jacksonville, female fish exposed to Georgia-Pacific paper mill waste have grown male genitalia. Outside Pensacola, Hurricane Ivan pushed mud ashore with high levels of arsenic and dioxin, traceable to International Paper's discharges in Perdido Bay. And in Perry, 50 miles south of Tallahassee, pollution from the Buckeye paper mill has killed most of the life in the Fenholloway River and created a 15-square-mile ``dead zone'' in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, the three mills have state and federal approval to pipe their wastes to larger bodies of water. The reason: They can't meet water quality standards - defined as fishable and swimmable - where they are polluting now. Federal and state environmental agencies opposed the pipeline solution when Buckeye first proposed it in the mid-1990s. Environmentalists say the agencies flip-flopped after President Bush and his brother Gov. Jeb Bush brought their pro-business, antiregulatory philosophies into office. Agency officials disagree, saying they came to see that the mills, with their multimillion-gallon discharges, could never meet pollution standards in smaller streams. ``These three facilities were all constructed in the early '40s before anybody was giving consideration to water quality issues we're concerned with today,'' said Jerry Brooks, the state Department of Environmental Protection's deputy water resources director. ``They all share this commonality of being located on small tributaries. In each case, the transport of that waste to a site removed from their facility was their best choice.'' Environmentalists and local grass-roots groups call the strategy a shell game that shifts the pollution elsewhere. They say the pipelines wouldn't be necessary if the paper companies would pay for cleaner technology widely used in Canada and Europe. The environmental and residents' groups have either filed lawsuits or plan to in each of these cases. ``Are we going to move into the 21st century and take advantage of advances in technologies that can clean this waste?'' asked Linda Young, Southeast director of the Clean Water Network. ``Or are we going to go backward and say dilution is the solution?'' `See It, Smell It, But Don't Touch It' Joy Ezell stares down into the chocolate-colored waters of the Fenholloway River, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head. The banks of the river are black. A metallic aroma hangs in the air on this cold, rainy afternoon. ``If you ever came and looked at the Fenholloway, see it, smell it, but don't touch it,'' Ezell warns. ``The sight of it will never leave your mind.'' In 1947, the Florida Legislature gave the Buckeye mill in Taylor County permission to use the Fenholloway as an industrial sewer. Since then, fish and other aquatic life have practically disappeared downstream from the mill, which dumps 46 million gallons a day of highly polluted wastewater. The pollution didn't stop at the river's banks. Ezell remembers coming home in 1981 after years away working as a chemical sales representative. Her grandmother warned her: ``Don't drink the water, honey. It's got Buckeye in it.'' Her grandmother's instincts were right. Well water downstream from the mill appeared brown, and it smelled. Geoffrey Watts, then a chemist for the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, tested hundreds of wells around the Fenholloway from 1989 to 1990. ``Based on this evidence, I reached the conclusion the river had affected the groundwater,'' Watts said. Findings Never Reported The state never officially reported Watts' findings because of objections from Buckeye that one analysis had falsely shown paper mill chemicals. Buckeye says the contamination could have originated from leaking underground petroleum tanks or agricultural chemicals. Watts disagrees. Buckeye officials say they plan to spend $58 million on pollution control improvements to restore the river. ``There are air and water improvements that we made voluntarily,'' said Michele Curtis, plant spokeswoman. ``We are resolved to work with the agencies to restore the Fenholloway to fishable and swimmable.'' Despite the improvements, Buckeye's discharge will still be high in salts and other minerals that could kill freshwater fish, said Dan Simmons, another plant spokesman. That's why the company wants to build a 15-mile pipeline to the mouth of the river. The water there is brackish, and salinity won't be a problem, he said. Environmental groups disagree. They say the $40 million that Buckeye is spending on the pipe could be spent on pollution upgrades that use oxygen instead of bleach to whiten the wood pulp. The upgrades would get Buckeye close to meeting the salt and mineral limits while dramatically reducing chlorinated pollutants such as dioxin, a known carcinogen. Government regulators and Buckeye officials disagree that the oxygen process would significantly lower salts and minerals. In the 1980s, some Taylor County residents started to agitate for the mill to clean up its pollution. The uprising in what had been a solid company town split families and ruined friendships. In 1992, the conflict turned violent. Stephanie McGuire, a reclusive woman who ran a fish camp on the Fenholloway, alleged that three men sliced her face and burned her breasts with cigarettes. She said she was targeted because she and others had threatened to sue Procter & Gamble, which owned the mill then. A yearlong police investigation found no evidence that confirmed McGuire's story. Her friends, including Young and Ezell, say the investigation was a whitewash. For decades the mill was a shining hope for families who wanted to keep their children from leaving town in search of decent-paying jobs. ``The plant was really an asset to Taylor County,'' said Buddy Odom, who worked at Buckeye for 15 years. But Odom said community attitudes changed as people became aware of the breadth of the pollution. Many of his old friends oppose the pipeline. They worry that the pollution that killed the river will now poison fish, oysters and crabs in the estuary. ``I think this river will be contaminated until Jesus comes,'' Odom said. ``It's 50 years that stuff's run into that river, and I don't see it clearing up.'' Slimed In Panhandle Jackie Lane was uneasy after Hurricane Ivan shoved muck an inch thick into her yard. Lane is head of the Friends of Perdido Bay, a group that for more than a decade has fought to stop pollution from International Paper in Cantonment. The mill's wastes flow into Perdido Bay via Eleven Mile Creek. Lane worried that the slime would contaminate her plants and vegetable garden. But she also saw an opportunity to gather more ammunition for her fight against International Paper. The company wants to pipe 22 million gallons of waste a day to wetlands on the edge of Perdido Bay. She had the slime tested and found it had high levels of arsenic and dioxin. The dioxin levels were higher than the bay sediment she had tested several years earlier. Lane said she now had evidence the pollution was increasing despite International Paper's claims that it had reduced dioxin levels. She sent the results to an environmental lawyer handling a class-action lawsuit against International Paper on behalf of bay area residents. ``I think it is a big ruse,'' Lane said of the pipeline-wetlands plan. ``Especially now that we've found dioxin in the sludges they dumped.'' Mike Steltenkamp, the mill's environmental health and safety manager, said International Paper is investing $27 million in new equipment to lower levels of dioxin and other harmful chemicals. The waste will get more treatment at the end of the pipe, Steltenkamp said. The company plans to convert a 1,400-acre pine plantation to wetlands. There, plants will absorb nutrients such as ammonia and phosphorus as the wastewater flows toward the bay. Environmentalists and local residents say restoring a pine plantation to wetlands will take years. They also doubt that 1,400 acres is enough land to properly treat 22 million gallons a day. ``It couldn't possibly work. [The water is] going too fast,'' said Peanut Crawley, who lives on the Alabama side of Perdido Bay. ``There's too many millions of gallons of water going across it. It would take a humongous area to do what they're talking about.'' `Win-Win' For Palatka Four years ago, Gov. Bush stood on the banks of Rice Creek near Palatka to celebrate a new discharge permit for the Georgia-Pacific mill. Bush described the agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a ``win-win.'' The new permit would keep Putnam County's largest employer in business while reducing pollutants flowing into the creek. For years the mill has dumped as much as 36 million gallons of waste a day into Rice Creek, a tributary of the St. Johns River. The waste is heavy with nutrients that have been linked to toxic algae blooms in the St. Johns River, and mineral salts, deadly to freshwater fish. Tissue samples showed fish in Rice Creek with high levels of dioxin. Some species of female fish had developed male sexual characteristics, a phenomenon also documented in the Fenholloway River and Eleven Mile Creek. Georgia-Pacific agreed to invest $168 million on equipment that would reduce pollutants. But the agreement also allows the company to build a pipeline to the St. Johns River if the mill's waste can't meet water quality standards in Rice Creek. Environmentalists complain that the state gave the company nine years after the permit was granted to have all the technological upgrades in place. They also said the company is doubling production of paper tissue, a move that will increase wastewater discharges from 22 million gallons a day to 60. Georgia-Pacific environmental manager Myra Carpenter said the company is on target to have the new equipment running by the end of 2006. The mill has installed a $100 million bleach plant that eliminates a type of chlorine which forms dioxin. EPA's Hyatt said Georgia- Pacific is in compliance with the agency's recommended dioxin limit of 0.014 parts per quadrillion. But Hyatt conceded that such minute amounts can't be measured. The EPA considers the mill in compliance if it meet levels of 10 parts per quadrillion. ``We know the process improvements that all these mills are doing should improve the amount of dioxin being discharged from the bleach plant,'' Hyatt said. Despite the state and federal permits, the pipelines are far from a done deal. Environmental groups, including the National Resources Defense Council in Washington, plan to carry the fight to federal courts. Local citizens groups say they also will be involved. ``We'll never stop fighting it,'' said Timothy Keyser, a lawyer with the Putnam County Environmental Council. ``It's important to our group and most of the community. The St. Johns River is the heart of our community.'' Researchers Buddy Jaudon and Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303. |
|
|
| (18359) | |
Re: Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink |
|
|
Posted by Peter Rosa on Tue Mar 8 22:24:48 2005, in response to Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink, posted by Orange Blossom Express on Tue Mar 8 19:45:52 2005. female fish exposed to Georgia-Pacific paper mill waste have grown male genitaliaThat can happen to human females who use steroids. My LIRR/NYCT blog |
|
|
| (18446) | |
Re: Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink |
|
|
Posted by Richard Rabinowitz on Wed Mar 9 13:23:02 2005, in response to Re: Paper Mills' Waste Causes A Stink, posted by Peter Rosa on Tue Mar 8 22:24:48 2005. Really? Go tell that to a F2M transsexual. They might appreciate the heads-up (if, of course, you're telling the truth). |
|
|