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I'd be interested to hear Dan's reply to Linda.

Good Times wrote:I'd be interested to hear Dan's reply to Linda.

Me too.

I went to Ms. Linda's website. Seems like they are aligned with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is no friend of the outdoorsman. Furthermore, her group seems to be against a lot of things I am against, but they are also against many good projects. So, personally, I don't see myself aligning with this group.

MudDucker - thank you for visiting my website. Yes Sierra Club is a group that we align ourselves with from time to time and sometimes we are on opposite sides. We also have a lot of members who are hunters and fishers, boaters, divers, etc. Our organization is just focused on keeping our waters clean and getting the polluted ones cleaned up. I am not an enviro that believes we should take away people's right to fish, while we are allowing pollution to flow unchecked into our waters. If we would protect fish habitat and keep the water clean then there would be plenty of fish for everyone. Red tide has killed way more fish than anyone has caught in the last few years. There was a red tide that originated from the Fenholloway River last year that killed fish for 30 miles. Some of my fishermen friend saw it and documented it.

Also, did you folks see the black goo that washed up up on Wakulla Beach last fall? Well, I had the stuff sampled at 4 different labs (one is even in England) and guess where that black goo came from? Buckeye! I have the lab tests and the report that was done to prove it.

So if you don't like everything I do to protect our waters, well that's okay. But if you want to protect our waters and you can find someone else who is doing a better job of getting things cleaned up than I am, please let me know and I'll help them. If you want to help us with our efforts, then let me know and we'll work with anyone who shares our love of the water.

One more thing. I not only took Buckeye up on the boat ride and the tour, I hired a $1,000 a day expert to tour their plant for 3 days. An ordinary person (like myself) can walk through that mill all day long and it will mean almost nothing to you. Of course, Buckeye will fill your ears with propaganda and you can believe that if you choose.

The most telling thing you can look at is the proposed permit for Buckeye's pipeline. In addition to what's in my first post, the mill will continue to have almost no pollution limits for another 9 years after the permit is issued. And then the items I listed in my first post (and more) will allow them to continue creating a big dead zone in the Big Bend.

I'm sorry if this is boring, but I think the Big Bend is important enough that we should take better care of it. Linda

MudDucker wrote:

Good Times wrote:I'd be interested to hear Dan's reply to Linda.

Me too.

I went to Ms. Linda's website. Seems like they are aligned with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is no friend of the outdoorsman. Furthermore, her group seems to be against a lot of things I am against, but they are also against many good projects. So, personally, I don't see myself aligning with this group.

That has always been my take on the Sierra Club too. For everything they support that I do, they are against at least as many as well.

PPPpppFFFfffTTTttt!!!

lindayoung wrote:MudDucker - thank you for visiting my website. Yes Sierra Club is a group that we align ourselves with from time to time and sometimes we are on opposite sides. We also have a lot of members who are hunters and fishers, boaters, divers, etc. Our organization is just focused on keeping our waters clean and getting the polluted ones cleaned up. I am not an enviro that believes we should take away people's right to fish, while we are allowing pollution to flow unchecked into our waters. If we would protect fish habitat and keep the water clean then there would be plenty of fish for everyone. Red tide has killed way more fish than anyone has caught in the last few years. There was a red tide that originated from the Fenholloway River last year that killed fish for 30 miles. Some of my fishermen friend saw it and documented it.

Also, did you folks see the black goo that washed up up on Wakulla Beach last fall? Well, I had the stuff sampled at 4 different labs (one is even in England) and guess where that black goo came from? Buckeye! I have the lab tests and the report that was done to prove it.

So if you don't like everything I do to protect our waters, well that's okay. But if you want to protect our waters and you can find someone else who is doing a better job of getting things cleaned up than I am, please let me know and I'll help them. If you want to help us with our efforts, then let me know and we'll work with anyone who shares our love of the water.

One more thing. I not only took Buckeye up on the boat ride and the tour, I hired a $1,000 a day expert to tour their plant for 3 days. An ordinary person (like myself) can walk through that mill all day long and it will mean almost nothing to you. Of course, Buckeye will fill your ears with propaganda and you can believe that if you choose.

The most telling thing you can look at is the proposed permit for Buckeye's pipeline. In addition to what's in my first post, the mill will continue to have almost no pollution limits for another 9 years after the permit is issued. And then the items I listed in my first post (and more) will allow them to continue creating a big dead zone in the Big Bend.

I'm sorry if this is boring, but I think the Big Bend is important enough that we should take better care of it. Linda

Protecting our resources is not boring to most of the folks on here.

I am all for clean water within reasonable limits.

There is one claim here you make that I am pretty sure is opposed to what FWC reported. I was told by an FWC biologist on another site that the red tide last year originated off of Tampa and there were suspicions that another smaller wave originated from the New Orleans disaster. Never heard the Big Bend area mentioned as a cause.

I also heard, but never saw proof, that the Wakulla beach was an intentional dumping incident. Don't know how that ties in with Buckeye.

As for paper mills. I worked for OI during the summers between my first two years of law school. You don't have to tell me what is in a paper mill, the making of paper generates a chemical cesspool as the process uses very strong chemicals to break down the wood fibers. OI had begun its clean up efforts back then and they made and have made a lot of progress. Don't think I would drink the discharge though.

I see you only note that you are not against fishermen. I would guess from your site content that you and your folks are against hunters. I am a hunter and a fisherman. If you are against either, you are not on my team. Doesn't mean I am not for your work with the Fenholloway, but I won't be joining your ranks.

Linda, I engage on this site to discuss fishing and because it's generally more rational than most sites. My full time job is dedicated to teaching people how to be skeptical.
-Lest we be puppets.
Lot's of puppets around -all around. Some of the questions directed to you are looking to find out who is pulling your strings. Those are always good questions, especially when we (regularly) ask ourselves the same questions.

Waxing BS aside, I am very interested in any evidence you can cite to support the following:

lindayoung wrote:There was a red tide that originated from the Fenholloway River last year that killed fish for 30 miles.

lindayoung wrote: Also, did you folks see the black goo that washed up up on Wakulla Beach last fall? Well, I had the stuff sampled at 4 different labs (one is even in England) and guess where that black goo came from? Buckeye! I have the lab tests and the report that was done to prove it.

I have not read any reports regarding evidence identifying the sources of these problems.
Thank you!

lindayoung wrote: Also, did you folks see the black goo that washed up up on Wakulla Beach last fall? Well, I had the stuff sampled at 4 different labs (one is even in England) and guess where that black goo came from? Buckeye! I have the lab tests and the report that was done to prove it.

Linda I'm very good friends with one of the DEP biologists that investigated this incident and this was never the determination made. I'm not saying Buckeye doesn't have a lot of problems, but this seems like rhetoric to me. The problem with rhetoric is someone might call you on it.

Tom and others - I'll share with you what I know about the black goo in more detail and then you can make your own decision.

I have been working on getting three papermills cleaned up in Florida for a number of years. My organization initiated a lawsuit against Champion International (now International Paper Company) several years ago over their pollution to Perdido Bay. That suit is now in Circuit Court in Escambia County awaiting class certification from the judge. Anyway, we did a two year study on the black goo that sits on the bottom of Perdido Bay (and other water quality issues) and I am very familiar with the results of those studies.

When the black goo washed up on Wakulla beach, I went down to check it out and thought immediately, "this looks and smells just like the black goo that is downstream from the IP mill in Perdido Bay." So I got a sample from a certified lab and had it sent to the same scientist (sediment expert) who did our study on the IP black goo. His name is Dr. Wayne Isphording, at USA in Mobile. I asked him to do the same analysis on the Wakulla Black goo that he had done on the Perdido Bay black goo to see if there are any similarities. He had four different types of analyses done on it: AOX, particulate size, carbon and metals. The particulate size work was done at a lab in England. These tests are done because they provide the links to the paper mll effluent as the source.

The analyses were done and they came back showing that the black goo at Wakulla is very similar to the black goo at Perdido Bay and that it could not possibly be from a natural source. There is a very good study that was done in Canada that also identifies the solid mass that settles out of papermill discharges and those findings are consistent with our findings from these two mills. So I have the final report on the Wakulla black goo if any of you are interested in seeing it.

I have not released it to the media yet because we are doing even further research first. I won't share all of our legal strategies with you right now because Dan Simmons is reading all of this too and Buckeye has a lot more money for lawyers and scientists than I do, and they will do whatever they can to interfere with our work. Obviously, they are looking out for their interests, which any company would do.

However, I have shared our research with DEP and the Governor's office. I met with Janet Lewellyn, director of water resources at DEP, several months ago and gave her our report on the black goo. DEP has not commented on it, but apparently chooses to ignore this very compelling evidence. We will deal with that in court eventually.

So, I do have an agenda. It is to make Buckeye invest their money in technology upgrades instead of a pipeline. I am a fisherwoman (although I don't get to do it as much as I'd like to) and a mother and I think it is just plain stupid for us to let a company like Buckeye destroy resources that belong to everyone. Especially when it is unnecessary - there are solutions to Buckeye's problems that don't involve a pipe to the Gulf and they cost about the same as the pipe. That's my agenda in a nutshell. Thank you for your questions. I'm glad there is so much interest in this topic because obviously I have not been able to get Buckeye to do the right thing yet, in spite of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have spent trying. We need more people to speak out and demand better and then we will get it. Linda

How did the black goo get from Buckeye to Wakulla beach??

Littoral - I totally agree about the puppet thing. Questions are good.

Regarding the red tide - my friend George Stamos, who lives at Keaton Beach (I think) and is an avid fisherman told me that he and his buddies were out fishing last year and they saw a massive amount of dark water coming from the Fenholloway (more and darker than normal). He said they reported it to DEP. Then shortly thereafter they saw a huge fish kill in the same area and he said they followed a trail of dead fish for about 30 miles. If you know George, you can ask him about this. He notified me about it when it happened because it was so shocking. Some time after that, I was looking at red tides from satellite images on the NOAH site and I saw a huge red tide off the coast from the Fenholloway stretching to the west. That's what I know.

An earlier post said that last year's red tides came from the Tampa area and from New Orleans. Yes - that is my understanding too. The giant red tide that sat off the coast from Tampa to Naples (especially bad around Sarasota) is a different episode than the Big Bend red tide that George reported and that I saw on the NOAH site. The Sarasota red tide is thought by researchers to have resulted from massive polluted water discharges from Lake O down the Caloosahatchee.

thanks for your questions. Linda

Rocket - I forgot to mention the part about how it got from the Fenholloway to Wakulla. Here's the theory:

According to one of our experts for the Buckeye case, Dr. Tony Sturgis, FSU oceanography department, with the right winds and currents, the solids that would be discharged from the pipe could be picked up (in a big blob) and moved up to 75 miles in either direction (depending on the winds/currents). Dr. Sturgis made this assertion long before the black goo showed up. In fact, he sent it to the Tallahassee Democrat in a letter to the editor and that's how I found him and got him involved in our case.

Remember last summer when tropical storm Alberto landed just south of the Fenholloway? Then a few months later, the black goo landed on Wakulla beach. Well, my theory is that the counter clockwise motion of the winds and currents could have lifted the black goo that has been settling and building up at the mouth of the Fenholloway, set it adrift in the direction of Wakulla and eventually it landed on the beach.

The one thing I'm convinced of, based on the lab analyses, is that the black goo is from a pulp mill and Buckeye is the only one around. Our further research will confirm this even more.

I hope is helpful. Linda

MudDucker - I forgot to comment on something you said - that I must be against hunters because I didn't say anything about not being against them. I'm not sure why you would think that, but anyway, I'm not at all against hunters. In fact, many hunters are members of my organization because they care about protecting our waters too.

I work very closely with hunters in Bay county, where we are trying to stop the state from spending some $150 million dollars to subsidize a new airport for St. Joe.

And if you walked into my home right now, you would see a large gun safe which is fully stocked with hunting rifles and other firearms. No I'm not a hunter myself, but I certainly don't have a problem with them. Linda

ps - I guess I'm not your typical environmentalist. Maybe because my family has been here in the panhandle for 6 generations and we have our own way of doing things.

I enjoy this site on a daily basis…but I enjoy the fishing posts and looking at fish pictures exponentially more than this one. I did look at Ms. Young’s website and her posts.

Like Littoral, I am a skeptic…that is…when the doctor wants to do surgery, there better be a real proven cause and effect or else I’m looking for a second opinion.

Ms. Yound said “The one thing I'm convinced of, based on the lab analyses, is that the black goo is from a pulp mill and Buckeye is the only one around. Our further research will confirm this even more.â€

Can't wait to see that report PFM.

Linda, where does your organization get it's funding?