DEP: GP must build pipeline --- Mandate will help improve Rice Creek

DEP: GP must build pipeline

Mandate will help improve Rice Creek

By KATI BEXLEY
kati.bexley@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 07/30/08

Georgia-Pacific Corp. has spent $200 million in environmental improvements to its plant to clean the discharge it dumps into a St. Johns River tributary in Palatka, but it wasn't enough -- the water quality is still poor. Now the Florida Deparment (sic) of Environmental Protection is requiring the company to spend $35 million on a pipeline that will inject the discharge directly into the river.

A report in March shows that during a dry season, 95 percent of the Rice Creek tributary flows out from GP, company spokesman Jeremy Alexander said Tuesday. After the report, DEP mandated through an administrative order that the company build the pipeline.

Melissa Long, DEP water program administrator, said the pipeline's discharge won't have a negative effect on the river.

"The discharge is already going into the river. We're not changing the amount that goes (into it)," she said. "The positive impact will be seen in Rice Creek."

River advocates feel differently, and some have fought the pipeline in court since 2002.

The company's paper mill dumps 24 to 27 million gallons of water laced with chlorine into the creek each day, St. Johns River advocates say.

The mill has disposed wastewater into the creek since 1947.

Linda Young, director of Clean Water Network of Florida, said the chlorine creates dioxin in the creek. Dioxin, a toxic, carcinogenic compound, is the same chemical in Agent Orange that has caused birth defects in Vietnam for 40 years, she said.

Young said it takes anywhere from 30 days to two or three months for water to flow from Palatka to the mouth of the St. Johns, and in the meantime, the company's discharge will sit there.

Long said the department didn't want the pipeline and hoped to keep the discharge in Rice Creek. But, she said, it's not possible to bring the water quality up to standards because it is a low-flowing creek, especially during a dry season.

The company has spent $100 million on equipment called oxygen delignification. This adds a wash cycle to the pulp, creating cleaner water that is sent to Rice Creek. More than $88 million also was spent on an elemental chlorine-free bleach plant that takes some of the dioxin out of the flow.

"We absolutely think we had every legal right (to forgo spending $200 million and build the pipeline)," Alexander said. "But spending the money was the right thing to do for the environment."


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Pipeline time line



Publication Date: 07/30/08

* 1993: Georgia-Pacific first applied for pipeline permit with Department of Environmental Protection.

* 1998: DEP and Environmental Protection Agency look at possible technology that could improve Rice Creek instead of putting in a pipeline.

* 2002: An administrative hearing with DEP, Clean Water Network, Stewards of St. Johns and Putnam County Environmental Council is held about the pipeline.

* 2002: Received Permit and Administrative Order stating if new equipment did not improve water quality in Rice Creek, the pipeline would be built.

* March 15, 2006: New equipment installed.

* June 15, 2008: Study shows Rice Creek still does not meet DEP water standards.

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