BigBendFishing.Net

We get our funding from our members and from foundations - like most non-profits.

I didn't feel that we needed further research as the lab reports are conclusive. However, the scientists and lawyers that are working on the Buckeye case with me felt that we would be more successful at stopping Buckeye's pipeline to the Gulf if we had even more evidence that the black goo is theirs. So, I am going along with it, even though the tests are expensive.

I have been in court against Buckeye's lawyers before. They fight dirty and the system is designed to make it difficult for citizens to prevail, so I have learned the hard way to not take anything for granted. Linda

Some of those Govt. officials like the ones that decided that there is no more Red Grouper right?

Govt. officials often find what is in the best interest the group that finances their election efforts not necessarily the voter.

I saw that darker water if you fished on the edge it would work, you couldn't catch much once you got in it.

Areas you would catch lots of fish in before the dark water showed.

Our guess was that during the storm the retention ponds overflowed by mistake or when the extra water was present they decided to get rid of some bad stuff and let it roll down stream.

We have no tests no labs but we were there and could see the immediate effect at that time.

I have no training these are opinions and observations of myself and others that fish Spring Warrior often.

The weeds were changed for the worse right after this event. Less of the good grass a bunch of bad grass.

The good grass looks like it got burned.

My 02

lindayoung wrote: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.

The Sierra Club is decidedly anti-hunting, but pro-fishing (I guess the hook is less traumatic on the fish). You admit affiliation and only mentioned fishermen. Sometimes a gap in a response fills more words than a page of writing. Glad to hear you are atypical though

This entire thread is a case study in environmental issues. It's unfortunate that it's so difficult to make sense of problems that are so important.
I now return to my daily quest -teaching people how to be skeptical.

Several recent posts by Ms. Young caught my attention. Since her statements did not require an immediate response, I decided to set them aside for a few days to gain additional perspective.

As a visitor to this site, I feel like a guest in the homes of forum members. I commit to not making this discussion an awkward personal dispute between Ms. Young and me. The issue is how to restore the Fenholloway River to fishable and swimmable standards and, at the same time, improve Gulf water quality.

Buckeye’s water quality goals are simple but comprehensive: improve plant wastewater quality, improve river water quality and improve water quality in the Gulf of Mexico.

Significant progress has already been made.

Wastewater color (which can impact seagrasses) has been reduced by 50 percent, wastewater volume has been reduced by 22 percent, and the discharge of sodium has been reduced by 27 percent. The use of elemental chlorine to purify pulp has been eliminated. A Fenholloway fish advisory has been lifted by the Florida Department of Health. These necessary improvements have cost tens of millions of dollars.

Buckeye readily acknowledges more must be done.

A proposed nine-year work plan includes upgrading equipment within the Buckeye plant to further reduce color and nutrients in the wastewater and to increase river oxygen levels; enhancing 6,700 acres of company-owned wetlands to stabilize water flows to the upper Fenholloway; and removing salty wastewater from the freshwater portions of the Fenholloway. This latter provision involves the much-discussed pipeline.

The proposed new wastewater permit for our facility specifically requires a 47 percent reduction in carbonaceous biological oxygen demand, a 58 percent reduction in total nitrogen, a 29 percent reduction in total phosphorous, and an addition reduction in effluent color.

It is incorrect to say this plan of work harms Gulf water quality – it improves Gulf water quality.

Over the past 15 years there have been many Fenholloway public hearings involving thousands of people, and numerous scientific studies of the river costing millions of dollars.

After the September 29, 2005 Fenholloway public meeting, exactly eight people signed a petition indicating they wanted to continue to fight the FDEP’s proposed river restoration plan in an administrative hearing. Since then FDEP opponents have battled unsuccessfully in the federal court system.

Buckeye does not look forward to additional legal proceedings. However, the Clean Water Network and other petitioners deserve the opportunity to have any legitimate concerns heard by an independent state hearing officer. We are confident the proposed permit is based on good science and will withstand rigorous scrutiny.

There may be those who are not interested in legal wrangling but are nevertheless interested in learning more about ongoing efforts to restore the Fenholloway and improve Gulf water quality.

Buckeye will continue to provide briefings and tours to individuals and groups who want to see our operation and the Fenholloway River firsthand. We value two-way communications with our neighbors.

To schedule a visit, call me at work (850-584-1275) or at home in the evenings (850-584-8147). – Dan Simmons, Buckeye




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Dan, I am curious about the pipeline issue. If you read my previous post I hope you can see that I feel Buckeye is a good neighbor here in Perry, but I do have concerns. I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination but I question dumping this water straight from the plant into the gulf. Doesn't the river act as a natural filter?

I appreciate you taking the time to offer tours and explanations of what Buckeye is doing.

I also think it is a great thing when a diverse a group as we have can get together in a forum and discuss issues such as this without getting ugly.

Dan Simmons wrote: It is incorrect to say this plan of work harms Gulf water quality – it improves Gulf water quality.

Thanks for the response Dan. I appreciate you and Linda for taking time to invest in the conversation. Can you explain how the pipeline diverting waste water into the gulf improves Gulf water quality?

Dan Simmons wrote: It is incorrect to say this plan of work harms Gulf water quality – it improves Gulf water quality.

That is the way things get twisted. Politicians do this kind of doublespeak also.

It may be true that the plan improves water quality, BUT, the reason it needs improving in the first place is because they are polluting. If there was never a plant there in the first place, there would be no need to improve it......

EITHER scenario will harm Gulf water quality, maybe one will harm it less. I am no tree hugger, but lets be frank and truthful.



Dubble

Dubble is on the money. This plan may improve water quality, but "improve" is a loaded word. They're still harming the water quality, maybe just a little less than they used to.

Beatswork asks

Doesn't the river act as a natural filter?

The river does not act as a filter. Key issues with Buckeye’s treated wastewater include color, salinity (more technically referred to as specific conductance), lowering of dissolved oxygen levels in the Fenholloway, and nutrients.

The Fenholloway does not filter out color. The river does not filter out salinity. The river can not filter out or effectively mitigate the wastewater’s impact on dissolved oxygen. The river can, at times, change the form of nutrients but this does not result in a water quality improvement.

The view that the Fenholloway filters, or “settles out pollutionâ€

Dan,
Again, thanks for being open to this forum. Just a thought, Why couldnt a series of filters be used to strain the wastewater to suitable levels to be able to discharge the water back to the Fenholloway ? This may be a stupid questions but I was curious.

Dan, so what you're saying is you propose to run a pipe line directly into the Gulf to dump the saline pollutants so you can claim to of somewhat cleaned the river. Sounds like Tit-for-Tat to me. I comend yor efforts to clean your effluents before they leave the plant, but I would rather you look to different alternatives than a pipe line directly into the Gulf.

Dan, will the pipeline lower Gulf Water quality?

Bad Behavior asked

Why couldnt a series of filters be used to strain the wastewater to suitable levels to be able to discharge the water back to the Fenholloway ?

Buckeye investigated the possible use of reverse osmosis to filter dissolved salts from the plant’s wastewater. The RO system will remove salt – no doubt about that. In the process, RO creates a stream of highly concentrated brine that must be discharged.

The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant – to cite a Florida example – produces about 25 million gallons of freshwater each day and discharges 19 million gallons of brine. The RO brine can not be released into a freshwater fishable/swimmable water body.

The Tampa Desalination Plant solves the disposal problem by mixing the brine with 1.4 billion gallons of cooling water (per day) from a nearby electric generating plant and then discharging the salty by-product into a marine environment – Tampa Bay.

The RO process, if used to filter Buckeye wastewater, would also produce millions of gallons of brine each day. Disposing of that brine would still require the construction of a pipeline to a marine environment – the lower portion of the Fenholloway River.

For environmental and economic reasons, creating a highly concentrated brine would make treatment and disposal of Buckeye’s wastewater more difficult, not less difficult. We are not considering the use of RO.

BB’s concept of using filters – or some other equipment – is on point when it comes to removing organic material and nutrients from wastewater. The proposed plan of work does just that. Although they are not called filters, equipment upgrades in the plant’s pulp washing and screening area will capture (additional) waste organic material from the manufacturing process. The waste organic material will be kept out of the wastewater and used beneficially as fuel. These upgrades will reduce oxygen demand and color in the plant’s wastewater.

The plant’s existing secondary wastewater treatment system will undergo a major renovation to significantly reduce nutrients in the final wastewater.


Catch 22 wrote

Dan, so what you're saying is you propose to run a pipe line directly into the Gulf to dump the saline pollutants so you can claim to of somewhat cleaned the river.

There is no plan to run a pipeline directly into the Gulf. The proposed relocation of Buckeye’s treated wastewater is within the Fenholloway – about 1.7 miles (upstream) of the mouth of the river.

The purpose of the project is not to just improve the river “somewhatâ€

Hi everyone - you guys are raising some really good questions. Unfortunately, the answers are complicated and Dan does a great job of giving simple (wonderful sounding) answers, which in my opinion are very misleading and in some cases just flat untrue. I have several responses to offer, but first I'd like to share a few statements by others that have commented on Buckeye's proposed pipeline and the condition of their effluent. Here they are:

What the Experts say about Buckeye’s pollution pipe:

That toxic dead zone will move on and on:

Linda Young writes that the DEP permit would allow Buckeye to create a "three-mile dead zone" around a pipe extending into the Gulf of Mexico. Actually, that's the good news. But the toxic material in that dead zone won't simply stay there.

Suppose the weather is nice for many days, with weak winds, and the discharge from the end of the pipe is not carried away by currents but simply builds up around the end of the pipe. Then the wind begins to blow and, over the next week, blows at typical speeds so that the currents are roughly a quarter knot up to half a knot. The toxic water will be carried, nearly intact, roughly 75 miles - along the coast toward either the Shell Point and St. George Island beaches or toward the St. Pete beaches, depending on the direction of the winds.

The waste water will be stretched out into a long thin ribbon, rather than the original simple blob. If the winds blow it onshore it will not be pretty - unless the original outflow is thoroughly diluted, which seems highly unlikely. This does not sound like a good idea.
WILTON STURGES
sturges@ocean.fsu.edu
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“Fish, mayflies, clams, stoneflies, and other organisms require a high level of dissolved oxygen. When pollutants enter, the dissolved oxygen begins to decrease. The species present shift to those with an intermediate oxygen demand.â€