Suwannee Country will continue to be in a state of environmental jeopardy for the foreseeable future. There are many reasons for this, none of them good but all of them real. Industrial as well as consumer driven developments are going to have greater and greater impacts on such counties as Alachua, Suwannee, Dixie, Lafayette, Gilchrist, Taylor, Madison and Levy. Columbia County has been in eco trouble for years.
     
     The challenges will be numerous and seemingly endless. Population increases bring attendant demand for goods, services, power and jobs. New roads, more roads. New electric plants and electric lines going in all directions. New compromises with plants, trees and wildlife with each passing day. Destruction of the environment as a business-as-usual function instead of a rare occurrence. Say goodbye to the Gopher Tortoise, the Scrub Jay, the Rosemary, the Prickly Pear, the RCW (Red Cockaded Woodpecker), Vallisneria, Sagittaria and water lilies. Kiss off just about any plant, fish or mammal that requires clean water and un-toxic nourishment. North Florida, particularly the Big Bend Area, is in trouble today and almost certainly is to be in greater trouble tomorrow.
     
     Unless we do something about it. "WE" is Suwannee Audubon members and fellow-travelers plus the huge numbers of conscientious persons who see clearly what is happening and will fight to make it not happen.
     
     Items to keep our eyes on in weeks and months to come
     
     1. U.S. MILITARY interests continue to eye the largely undeveloped coastal areas of Florida's Big Bend for possible target practice, shooting missiles from off shore.
     
     2. A coal-powered POWER PLANT with tremendous pollutional potential is proposed for Taylor County near Perry. There is local support but also there is solid opposition. It would be unhealthy for the area and would wind up making some humans, especially infants and the elderly sick or sicker. The statistics on this are available for all to see.
     
     3. The CEMENT plant at Newberry is trying to get approval for enlarging so it can double the output of cement. The first plant has been pollutional for Alachua County and neighboring areas; to double production probably means to double pollution.
     
     4. BUCKEYE, the folks who make the raw stuff of which bright white disposable diapers are composed, want to by-pass the Fenholloway River which they have already ruined and instead run a pipe directly to the Gulf of Mexico estuary. The estuary is an important nursery area for juvenile fish including sport and food fish. The damage to the estuary would be significant and possibly catastrophic.
     
     The STUFF Buckeye has been putting in the river and now wants to pipe directly to the coast is a liquid by-product of their manufacturing, WHITENING process. Dangerous levels of many highly-toxic chemicals including DIOXIN are in this effluent. The health risk is substantial. There are less pollutional ways to make the Buckeye product but they are perhaps a wee bit more costly. The idea is to get the job done on the cheap with little concern for the Taylor people who may sicken or even die as a direct consequence. There is no shortage of research on this subject. Dioxin kills. And there is absolutely no doubt that the effluent kills and deforms fish and other forms of life; it has been doing so for decades right there in the poor Fenholloway! (U.S. 19/98 at Perry.)
     
     MORE ON COAL
     
     Not only is the burning of the stuff bad for human lungs and livers, MINING in recent days has taken an equally evil turn!
     
     Here are some quotes from the November 2005 Hightower LOWDOWN under the Heading: Our Oldest Mountains Are Being Blown Away.
     
     "In a cabal of ignorance and arrogance, giant coal corporations and their political henchmen literally are decapitating the Appalachian Mountains. It's called `mountaintop removal' (MTR), a form of strip-mining that is so destructive, so unbelievable and so unnecessary as to leave anyone who sees it whopperjawed...
     
     "Instead of either tunneling down into mountains or boring in from the side, coal companies devised a nifty new process some 30 years ago that lets them get to the coal much more cheaply and requires only a handful of workers. In essence, they simply blow off the top third or so of the mountains, exposing layers of coal which they then scoop out. First, though, they scalp the mountains.
     
     "They coldly clear-cut valuable oak and other hardwood trees, then brutally bulldoze them into huge piles and burn them as trash. Next, using massive shovels, they scrape off the ancient forest floor down to bedrock, removing all plant life, organisms and topsoil.
     
     "After this come the fireworks. Mine workers drill holes down into the rock and fill them with the same volatile mixture that Tim McVeigh detonated in Oklahoma City - only the typical MTR blast in Appalachia is ten times the force of that one. Next, excavating machines the size of 20-story buildings dig into the rock rubble and remove it, leveling the mountaintop and revealing the coal.
     
     "All those tons of boulders, sandstone, topsoil and vegetation that were scraped, dug and blasted are now categorized as 'spoil' by the industry and must be 'removed' from the now-decapitated mountain before the coal can be taken. Do the companies truck the spoil away. Good gracious, no! That would cost money. Instead, these corporations just shove their waste down into the valleys below, burying streams, animals, habitat and anything (or anyone) in the way.
     
     "What we have here is ecocide... the total annihilation of a priceless ecosystem older than the Himalayas. MTR has damaged or destroyed more than 1,200 miles of streams and King Coal has either targeted or already eliminated some 2,200 square miles of one of the most diverse temperate forests in the world."
     
     For more on this, visit the hightowerlowdown.com website or contact:
     Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment - 304-645-9006,
     www.appalachian-center.org
     Appalachian Voices - 828-262-1500, www.appvoices.org
     Coal River Mountain Watch - 304-854-2182, www.crmw.net
     Kentuckians for the Commonwealth - 606-878-2161, www.kftc.org
     Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition - 304-522-0246, www.ohvec.org
     Or get a copy of the April 2005 issue of Harper's magazine.