State: Dioxin at mill too high

TALLAHASSEE -- A pulp mill in North Florida's Taylor County is releasing 200 times more deadly dioxin than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe, according to newly released government test results.

Dioxin, an industrial poison that can cause cancer and harm wildlife, is coming from the Buckeye Cellulose mill on the Fenholloway River.

Florida environmentalists have been battling for a year to get the EPA's test results, but the Tennessee-based Buckeye Cellulose tried to block the government from releasing them. Buckeye claimed the EPA's 1999 tests of water and sludge at its Perry plant were "confidential business information."

This week, the EPA denied the company's claim, and released the information to the Clean Water Network, an environmental group.

Environmentalists held a news conference in Tallahassee to announce the results -- another development in the long-running saga surrounding Florida's most polluted river.

"This company has indicated, year after year, that they are not producing dioxin, when, in fact, they were producing dioxin," said Steve Medina, an environmental lawyer who opposes a state plan to build a 15-mile pipeline from the mill. The pipeline would to send the mill's waste into a wild stretch of the Gulf of Mexico north of Cedar Key.

The Fenholloway was once lush, with springs, a health resort and a bottling plant along its banks. Today, the river's black water has killed sea grasses for miles out in the gulf. Private wells in Perry -- the Taylor County seat -- have been polluted. Some fish in the river are starting to change sexes. Some insects there are deformed. And dioxin, which comes from chlorine bleaching, has accumulated in the river mud, possibly threatening wildlife.

All the pollution was legal under a state law that made the Fenholloway the only Florida river set aside for purely industrial use. The law was rescinded, but the waters remain polluted.

For years, Buckeye Cellulose has been responsible for testing its wastewater. It sent the government countless reports saying that the amount of dioxin coming from the mill was "non-detectable."

But the new tests by the EPA show something markedly different.

"All these industries do their own sampling, and we just have to trust them. Rarely do we have state and federal agencies do their own sampling," said Linda Young, an activist with the Clean Water Network.

Buckeye spokeswoman Sondra Dowdell called the EPA's test results "scientifically invalid." She insisted the mill produces no detectable dioxin. The company's testing methods are scientifically more valid than those the EPA used, she said.

"The dioxin issue is not an issue. We have none," Dowdell said, adding that Buckeye is improving the mill to make its discharge less harmful to the river and the Gulf of Mexico.

Marshall Hyatt, an EPA expert on water quality issues, said the EPA has long been aware of dioxin in the Fenholloway and has been warning the public not to eat fish caught there since 1990.

"Dioxin has been showing up in sediments downstream," Hyatt said. "The public shouldn't be eating fish from there."

Still, in 10 years, neither the state nor the federal government has posted signs along the Fenholloway to warn people not to eat the fish.

"It's pitiful," said Joy Towles Ezell, a Taylor County woman who has campaigned to clean up the Fenholloway. "People are still eating contaminated fish, and nobody's doing anything about it. I mean, how long do we have to wait?"

When asked why the Florida Department of Health hasn't put up signs warning anglers of the dioxin in Fenholloway fish, state toxicologist Joe Sekerke didn't have an answer.

"It hasn't been done, and I don't know exactly why," Sekerke said. "Putting signs up doesn't usually keep people from eating the fish anyway."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk