Georgia Pacific waste

[kitester]

     I have only read a few things about the GP controversy so I dont know the whole story. However the other day I had a chance conversation with a person who's company has been contracted by the ST. Johns River Keeper. He was telling me about the plans GP has to build a pipeline to pump effluent from the plant in Palatka out to the middle of the St Johns River. His company was hired to review the Brown and Caldwell study. What they found was that the B&C evaluation was short sighted and failed to deal with the real problems surrounding the plan. According to this independent review suitable alternatives were ignored and long standing problems were dismissed as unimportant. Essentially B&C said that GP's plan was the only alternative and that they should be allowed to build the pipe and sweep the problem under the rug.
      The river is Jacksonville's best feature and many of have grown up in and around its waters. It certainly seems to make sense that any idea that involves pumping waste water into it should be denied. But I have some questions. Apparently GP has been pumping its waste into Rice Creek for 40+ years. What is the difference between dumping into a creek that dumps into the St Johns and dumping waste down a pipe that dumps directly into the river? What does the effluent consist of and how toxic is it? Does the creek offer some form of natural filtration? How toxic is the water in the creek and do waste particles settle out as sediment on the bottom of the creek and the river. We live in the real world where every industry generates waste, most of it toxic to some degree. We grow up, live and die in a toxic environment. So where do we set our standards? Is killing a few microorganisms or fish acceptable to have the products that we love and use everyday? What real value does one small polluted creek have when weighed against human needs and desires. A very brief look at the GP web page reveals that just about all of us use products that are produced by GP, many of them coming from the processes the Palatka plant employes. There is just no way around it. Almost everything we do has a negative impact on the environment. There is simply no such thing as a clean industry.
    The following is from the River Keeper web page...."St. Johns Riverkeeper opposes the construction of a pipeline by Georgia-Pacific (GP) to divert its wastewater
from Rice Creek to the heart of the St. Johns River.  The pipeline will not restore the health of Rice Creek and
will only intensify existing pollution problems in the St. Johns River.  We believe that viable alternatives to the
pipeline exist that have not been fully evaluated by GP.
• The Georgia Pacific (GP) paper mill in Palatka has been discharging polluted wastewater to Rice Creek, a
tributary to the St. Johns River, since 1947.
• GP discharges 20-28 million gallons of wastewater to Rice Creek every day.
• GP’s permit to discharge wastewater into Rice Creek expired in August 2007.  The mill has been violating
water quality standards and discharging without an active permit since that time.
• GP is the largest point source of nitrogen pollution in the freshwater section of the St. Johns and the
second largest overall source of wastewater pollution in the river.
• GP’s effluent and settling ponds have polluted Rice Creek.  Sediments in the creek contain dioxin,
chlorophenols, and other toxic compounds.
• Rice Creek is not able to assimilate the pollution from Georgia-Pacific’s wastewater discharge and meet
state water quality standards (WQS).  As a result, GP has been proposing the construction of a 4-mile
long, 36” diameter pipeline to divert its wastewater from Rice Creek to the middle of the St. Johns River
since 1994.
• In 2002, the state of Florida issued an administrative order (AO) requiring GP to take corrective actions
to comply with water quality standards (WQS) in Rice Creek.  If WQS could not be met, GP would be
required to build a pipeline and relocate its wastewater to the St. Johns River by 2010.
• In 2008, samples analyzed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that GP was
discharging dioxin (a highly toxic carcinogen related to Agent Orange) in its wastewater at levels two to five
times higher than is allowed by law.
• GP continues to fail acute toxicity tests causing organisms to die when exposed to GP’s wastewater."

    From the EPA web page...."Dixon is a generic term for a group of 75 related chemical compounds known as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins. Dioxin is an unwanted by-product created by the manufacture of some chemical products, by certain combustion processes and by treating wood pulp with chlorine bleaching processes to make white paper.

Dioxin is a highly toxic chemical and is a probable human carcinogen. Dioxin persists in the environment and can accumulate in the tissue of fish, other wildlife and humans. It has caused cancer, liver dysfunction and toxic effects in laboratory animals."

    I think what we need are real numbers in lay terms. How much waste, how toxic and for how long are we willing to go before we draw the line. And are there any real alternatives to the current way of doing things and will they mean an increased cost of things we use everyday? Perhaps the waste is not "very" toxic and GP should be allowed to build the pipeline. Or maybe the waste is so toxic the plant should shut down completely? In a perfect world of 0 emissions and 0 tolerance we could have our cake and eat it too. But that world does not exist. I personally believe that there must be a way to eliminate contain or store most if not all of the toxic waste produced by GP. It may mean a higher cost of paper towels, toilet paper and such or we may have to accept less white alternatives to run through our printers.             

[Jason]

IMO, zero toxins is all that should be acceptable.  There are plenty of technologies today that are able to scrub effluent clean of toxins.... just costs some money.

The St. Johns is an amenity not an expenditure.

[copperfiend]

Georgia Pacific - Owned by the Koch Brothers. Their GOP puppets will do anything for them.