By Sally
Swartz
Palm Beach Post editorial writer
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Up in Florida's Panhandle, a
test awaits Gov. Crist's Department of Environmental Protection.
Will Secretary Michael Sole uphold a ruling that, finally, makes a paper mill
stop polluting once-pristine Perdido Bay? This month, an administrative law
judge denied the world's largest paper company, International Paper, a permit to
build a discharge pipe to the bay and told the DEP to make the firm obey
clean-water rules.
If Mr. Sole agrees with the judge, it will signal that Gov.
Crist means to make polluters accountable. If Mr. Sole overrides the judge's
recommendation - as he can - the "new" DEP's credo will remain
"business as usual."
International Paper got statewide attention in 2004, after
Gov. Jeb Bush's DEP secretary, David Struhs, engineered a public bailout for the
private polluter. Then, Mr. Struhs quit the agency to become International
Paper's vice president of environmental affairs. It was a natural transition in
more ways than that. One year earlier, Mr. Struhs supported the legislation that
extended by 10 years the deadline for cleaning up the Everglades.
Mr. Struhs started helping International Paper in 2000, after
it bought the mill near Pensacola. The mill, under several owners, has failed to
meet state water-quality standards since 1989 and dumps millions of gallons of
waste daily into nearby waterways. A Web site - www.friendsofperdidobay.com/
- shows photos of the mill's dirty foam and scum on beaches. The state never has
strictly enforced pollution rules for the mill, which employs almost 1,000
people.
Mr. Struhs arranged a $56 million, low-interest loan, administered by the DEP,
to a utilities authority for a sewage treatment plant and pipeline to the mill,
which then would send treated waste to "experimental" wetlands. The
money he funneled ordinarily would have been used to help small governments with
water cleanup projects. It was hard to tell which was worse: the deal itself, or
the fact that the public would be paying for it.
The deal was approved in October 2002. A year later, Mr.
Struhs recused himself from dealing with International Paper because the firm
was trying to hire him. He left the DEP for his new job in February 2004. That
year, the DEP signed off on the plan to pipe 23 million gallons of waste daily
to 1,500 acres of wetlands, which were supposed to filter the polluted water
before it enters the bay.
But on May 11, Florida Administrative Law Judge Bram Canter recommended that the
DEP deny International Paper's request to build the 10-mile pipeline to the
wetlands. In essence, the judge's decision negates the sweetheart deal Mr.
Struhs engineered at the public's expense. With that decision, the judge also
said that whether a pipeline is built or not, International Paper's discharges
don't meet water-quality standards and denied the experimental use of wetlands.
Mr. Struhs, contacted Tuesday at International Paper's Memphis office, said,
"The judge obviously erred." International Paper is appealing the
decision. "In any other part of the world," he said,
"International Paper's efforts to clean up would be celebrated and win some
awards." He said he believes the judge's decision is "not consistent
with DEP's own rules."
Stuart environmental lawyer Howard Heims argued the case
before Judge Canter for Friends of Perdido Bay and the James Lane family, which
has fought since the 1950s to stop the paper mill from dumping its waste into
the bay. Obviously, Mr. Lane is pleased with the ruling. But he has celebrated
other legal victories, sat on committees that recommended cleanup, and then
watched the DEP transfer regulators or polluters recruit them.