Cedar Key News: Another View of the Pulp Mill Pipeline

Howard Drew from Buckeye Technologies has argued that their plan for improving Fenholloway water quality will be benefical to the coastal ocean environment, by reducing pollutants (especially water color and nutrients) that have historically caused problems like seagrass dieoffs off the Fenholloway mouth. Part of that plan is a pipeline that would carry their effluent to the Fenholloway estuary, bypassing about 23 miles of the river. Concern has been raised that by dumping into the estuary rather than into the river upstream, the polluted water might reach the ocean in greater amounts or higher concentrations.

Mr. Drew is right in his claim that the main pollutants of concern to us here in Cedar Key (color, nutrients) will not be increased through transport of them by pipeline rather than the Fenholloway River channel. Those pollutants are not significantly reduced or permanently stored by being passed along such a short river, so it really does not matter to amounts reaching the estuary whether those amounts get there through a pipeline or a river channel. It is Buckeye's treatment improvements at source that will make the difference, not how the remaining pollution gets moved to the ocean. A few things like biochemical oxygen demand may be a bit higher in the estuary than they would if there were no pipeline, but those things are not ones that should directly concern people here.

Cleaning up the Fenholloway could create some great riverfront land development opportunities for Buckeye, and you might wonder whether a polluter ought to be allowed to benefit that way from investments in cleanup, but we really do not have good grounds for complaining that they are going to make matters worse in the coastal environment.

Carl Walters

Professor of Fisheries

University of British Columbia

(and Cedar Key winter resident

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