Residents Contest Permit For Mill's River Cleanup

By MIKE SALINERO msalinero@tampatrib.com
Published: Dec 27, 2005

TAMPA - In 1947, state officials gave the Buckeye pulp mill permission to dump toxic wastes into the Fenholloway River near Perry.

The dumping has continued, killing nearly all life in the river and creating a 25-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has approved a permit designed to restore the health of the Fenholloway. The document, which has been challenged by a group of Taylor County residents, would allow Buckeye to build a 15.3-mile pipeline to take its wastes to the mouth of the Fenholloway, less than two miles from the Gulf.

The permit outlines improvements to mill operations that Buckeye claims will clean up discharges to acceptable levels. But those improvements won't happen for nine years, according to the document. During that time, the mill will continue to work under the pollutant limits of a permit that expired in 1989. The Environmental Protection Agency and a federal judge found that permit to be grossly inadequate in protecting the environment.

Residents challenging the permit say the mill is merely moving its toxic problem to a bigger body of water. The draft permit, they say, will continue to allow discharges of dioxin, a chemical compound the EPA calls one of the world's most potent cancer-causing substances.

Endangering Seagrass Preserve

The pipeline will take mill waste nearer to the Big Bend Seagrasses Aquatic Preserve, a 150-mile-long protected area consisting mainly of submerged seagrasses and near-shore marshlands. The preserve is a nursery for mullet, sea trout, redfish, scallops, oysters, clams, shrimp and blue crab.

Coastal residents outside Taylor County worry about the effect the mill wastes will have on fishing, shellfish beds and tourism. Clam and oyster harvesters in Cedar Key, about 40 miles south of the proposed pipe's outfall, say the pulp waste could fuel red tide blooms like the ones that closed shellfish beds this year.

"We've got enough closures as it is in the Gulf without dumping a bunch of waste and chemicals on it," said Jeanine Beckham, owner of Cedar Key Oyster and Clam Co. "That's our food. They want to put that stuff on it, same as if they are dumping it right on your plate."

Pipeline opponents say the $40 million that Buckeye is spending on the project instead should go toward equipment upgrades that use oxygen instead of bleach to whiten the pulp. Combining bleach with wood pulp creates dioxin.

"They want a pipe; we don't want them to have a pipe," said Joy Ezell, one of the residents. "We want them to make process changes in the mill to clean it up."

Buckeye Says Mill Improving

Buckeye declined to comment directly for this article, saying many of the company's top managers were out for the holidays. But in a letter to the editor of the Cedar Key News, mill manager Howard Drew said Buckeye has invested $84 million since 1988 to cut down on pollutants discharged in the river.

Those expenditures, Drew said, have lightened the color of the wastewater by 50 percent, reduced the discharge volume by 22 percent and decreased the amount of sodium by 27 percent. The mill has eliminated use of elemental chlorine to purify pulp, reducing the amount of dioxin formed during the manufacture of paper and fiberboard products.

The mill plans to spend an additional $58 million over the nine-year permit. New equipment will take more color out of the wastewater, increase oxygen levels and reduce nutrients, Drew said.

During those nine years, however, Buckeye does not have to meet state water quality standards, according to the document. In defense of its permit, the DEP said it has set interim limits on pollutants that must be reached before the nine years are up.

However, a close examination of the documents shows those interim limits are no more restrictive than what Buckeye is dumping in the river now.

For example, one of the mill pollutants that killed fish and other aquatic life is called biological oxygen demand. Measured in pounds, it's the amount of largely organic materials in water. Biological oxygen demand indicates how much oxygen is being consumed as the organics break down.

In 2004, the highest amount of these materials that Buckeye discharged on a single day was 14,409 pounds. Under the interim limits, the mill would be allowed to dump more - up to 19,800 pounds a day.

Other interim limits are no limits at all. In the case of nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients that trigger algae blooms and rob the water of oxygen, Buckeye must only report how much it is discharging.

No Limits On Dioxin

The permit also would allow nine more years of harmful dioxin discharges.

Mill officials claim that recent plant improvements have reduced dioxin in the wastewater to "nondetectable" levels. Yet in January 2004, the EPA found dioxin downstream from Buckeye that far exceeded federal limits. In the summer of 1999, the EPA said dioxin levels in Buckeye's discharge were 200 times higher than the federal standard.

Despite Buckeye's claim that it has no problems with dioxin, the mill's lawyers filed court papers last week that claim Florida doesn't have rules or laws limiting how much of the carcinogen can be dumped into surface waters. The papers were part of Buckeye's motion to dismiss the Taylor County residents' challenge in state administrative law court.

State environmental officials, responding to questions from The Tampa Tribune, said in an e-mail that the agency does enforce federal dioxin limits.

"The question should be: Is the state operating under a protective dioxin standard? The answer is an unequivocal yes," the DEP officials said.