Bob Fulford comments on our February Fly Over of Fenholloway & Protor/Gamble/Buckeye Cellulose Plant

For whatever it's worth are some thoughts on our trip. I notice Katerine's e-mail address is not on this so perhaps one of you has it and can forward this to her.

These thoughts and observations are as they come to me and are in no particular order.

Having said that I will begin by saying that we had an excellent pilot and an interesting aircraft. While the weather, visability and wind were less than ideal the flight and the pilot's willingness to pretty much fly over whatever Stan suggested made for a good look-see.

I got the left hand rear seat so my view and photo vantage was somewhat limited but I did see pretty much all there was to see. I have not processed my photos yet so don't know what, if anything, I got. I had to open the lens pretty wide and slow the shutter speed way down and that, along with the moderate bumpiness, means I may have some blured pics. However, Stan and Katherine each had cameras going so my guess is that between us we have something useful.

As we circled over the mill at Perry I was reminded of Benito Mussolini's son's observation as he dropped bombs on innocent Ethiopians in the prelude to WW ll that the bombs bursting looked, from the air, like giant, beautiful rose blossoms unfolding.

As we circled over the steaming sludge ponds with the areators going in circles and that black nastiness they contain flowing into the river, I was reminded not of a rose but of an open sore; a running open sore; an open sore that has been oozing that poison into the river and Gulf all these years. For what! A lot of money for the few that steal our environment, a few jobs for the benighted working folk and some filters, diapers and Kotex! A devil's bargain if ever there was one.

On the way to the Gulf, following the meander of the Fenholloway, and later flying down the coast and up the Suwanee, one can see from the serpentine routes of all the water ways that the land there is very flat; any water and any pollutants that water contains has plenty of time to leach into the aquifer. The landscape is also dotted with sinkholes, windows on the aquifer, as it were. As I looked down on the tree farms, dairy farms, rock mines and cement plants (actually did not see the cement plant as it is farther north than our flight path but I know where it is. Even Jeb Bush knows where it is and now says he's sorry it's there) I was reminded of the time when a victorious army would plow salt into the fields of the vanquished. But wait: That was their enemy! Are we our enemy? Don't we know that the accumulation of pollutants in the soil and water will ruin us?

Go back now to the over-flight of the dead zone. Unfortunately because of the poor light and very strong wind out of the NW I could not discern any color differential. The surface was covered with frothy streaks that I think are there because of the effluent as further down the coast the wind streaks did not have the froth. As soon as this weather lays I will go take another look. There is no way that what I saw going into the river can come out in the Gulf and not be visable...very visable.

One other note. Because of the tree farm industry the landscape is covered; criss-crossed with roads that I would guess are for the tree farm business. My guess is that they are built with and maintained by the taxpayers. (I would like to be disabused of that notion) and result in fragmentation of the landscape to the detriment of the wildlife.

Thanks again to SouthWings, Caroline and Roy Zimmer.

Bob