Tag Archives: pollution

Rayonier, Altamaha, Georgia, 2012-09-08

It smelled as bad as it looked:

Smelled as bad as it looked

Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 September 2012.

This is the notorious Rayonier paper mill near Jesup, Georgia, that Georgia Water Coalition ranked on its Dirty Dozen, 2011’s worst offenses against Georgia’s Water, as #2, Altamaha River: Rayonier Pulp Mill Discharge Destroys Fisheries. That report got a reaction from Rayonier, according to Mike Morrison in Jacksonville.com 8 November 2011, Rayonier acknowledges waste issues,

The head of Rayonier acknowledged Monday that there are problems with the water it discharges into the Altamaha River at its paper mill near Jesup but said the company is ahead of schedule on cleaning it up.

The Georgia Water Coalition on Saturday ranked a stretch of river in the vicinity of the mill second on its “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the state’s most polluted or otherwise damaged rivers, streams, wetlands and marshes.

“We are very committed to the water quality of the Altamaha River,” Rayonier Chairman and CEO Lee Thomas said. “It’s important to us, just as it is important to the people of southeast Georgia. We’re working hard to improve the discharge.”

Rayonier’s pollution remains famous in song and story, such as in this YouTube video.

Continue reading →

Toxic corn and cotton pollute our streams

Steve Connor writes in The Independent 28 Sep 2010 that GM maize ‘has polluted rivers across the United States’:
An insecticide used in genetically modified (GM) crops grown extensively in the United States and other parts of the world has leached into the water of the surrounding environment.

The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects such as the European corn borer beetle. Scientists have detected the insecticide in a significant number of streams draining the great corn belt of the American mid-West.

The researchers detected the bacterial protein in the plant detritus that was washed off the corn fields into streams up to 500 metres away. They are not yet able to determine how significant this is in terms of the risk to either human health or the wider environment.

This is the same “gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuriengensis (Bt)” used in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready cotton and peanuts and soybeans. Since Continue reading →

DoJ vs. Monsanto Seed Monopoly

More on some welcome news,, this time from William Neuman in the New York Times:
The Justice Department began an antitrust investigation of the seed industry last year, with an apparent focus on Monsanto, which controls much of the market for the expensive bioengineered traits that make crops resistant to insect pests and herbicides.

Why?

Critics charge that Monsanto has used license agreements with smaller seed companies to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and to block cheaper generic versions of its seeds from eventually entering the market. DuPont, a rival company, also claims Monsanto has unfairly barred it from combining biotech traits in a way that would benefit farmers.

Monsanto of course claims to be unfairly maligned, and its CEO, Hugh Grant, says:

“We were the first out of the blocks, and I think what you see now is a bunch of people catching up and aggressively competing, and I’m fighting with them,” Mr. Grant said. He said farmers chose the company’s products because they liked the results in the field, not because of any untoward conduct on Monsanto’s part.

Reality seems to differ: Continue reading →