Toxic Town

They say I live in a toxic town. Well, whoever “they” are is probably right. While I do not live in Escambia County, I spend a good bit of time there at school and for work, and look at Escambia County. It is ranked the number one county for toxic chemical releases in Florida, winning this probably unwanted title by nearly 13 million pounds. It is also in the top 10 in the country, and I don’t think that can be good for me or the people around here. But I do live on the safer side of the river in Santa Rosa County, which checks in at 21^st in Florida, and who knows where in the nation. Releasing only 645,000 pounds of toxic chemicals looks a lot better than that 38 million that Escambia is releasing. So they say I live in a toxic town, but I feel I will be just fine. I will live my life, enjoy it and try not to think about these toxic chemicals being released. But maybe I should just spend some more time at home in Santa Rosa County.

Arizona Chemial Co. TRI Story

Arizona Chemical Co. continued their trend of lower releases of toxic chemicals in Escambia County in the 2007 Toxic Release Inventory report by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The TRI is a publically available database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities annually by certain industries as well as federal facilities. The database can be accessed at www.epa.gov/triexplorer.

Arizona Chemical Co. released 11,441 pounds of toxic chemicals in 2007, down 16 percent from the 13,696 pounds released in 2006.

The results were the lowest for the company since 2000.

Arizona Chemical Co. credits their reduction is toxic chemicals released to its recognition and awareness of its releases.

“We have focused on two things aggressively,” said Khalid Hasna, an environmental engineer at Arizona Chemical Co. in Pensacola. “First, in 2000 we went to equipment with emissions control and second we are focusing more on waste minimization.”

The company continues to release ethylbenzene, phenol and xylene. All three toxic chemicals are suspected to be toxicants that have human health hazards.

Ethylbenzene is the only recognized carcinogen, while all three chemicals are suspected to be a cardiovascular or blood toxicant, a developmental toxicant and a neurotoxicant according to Scorecard.org, a pollution information site.

Cardiovascular or blood toxicants are known to cause adverse effects on the nervous or hematopoietic (blood) systems, while developmental toxicants are known to have effects that include birth defects and biological dysfunctions, among others.

Arizona Chemical Co. was founded in 1930 and currently employs more than 1,400 people worldwide with its headquarters located in Jacksonville, Fla.

According to the company’s official website, it is the world’s largest producer of naturally derived specialty resins and pine-based chemicals for the adhesives, inks and coatings, lubricants, fuel additives, mining and oleochemicals markets.

While the manufacturing location in Pensacola, located at 411 S. Pace Blvd., released 11,441 pounds of toxic chemicals on-site, it handled a total of 11,158,167 pounds of waste, which is also on the decline in the past decade.

The company feels that is can handle such a large amount of waste with little release because of its efforts, once again.

“We have streamlined our processes to optimize efficiency,” Hasna said. “It is a combo of things, from recycling more to off-site transfers.”

Arizona Chemical Co. transferred 35,718 pounds of toxic chemicals off-site for further waste management, attempting to become a more environmentally-safe company.

“Byproducts get sent to treatment storage facilities, which are landfills, fuel blenders and waste incinerators,” Hasna said. “Fuel blenders recover liquid waste and energy and resell it as a fuel while waste incinerators are used to recycle waste to produce electricity and steam.”

 

 

 

Fossil Creek Restoration

Fossil Creek had its flow diverted to power plants for around 100 years, until 2005 when the Arizona Public Service Company (APS) decommissioned the power plants and returned the flow to its normal state.

One of the main contributors to the restoration of Fossil Creek was Northern Arizona University. NAU had a team that collected baseline data and tracked changes over time. They wanted to reintroduce native fish and reestablish travertine pools created by the calcium-rich water of Fossil Creek. They also worked with the U.S. Forest Service on adaptive management strategies.

The Game and Fish Department closed Fossil Creek to fishing until 2007 to give the native fish time to recover and adapt.

The restoration was a success, as it has become a model for succeeding restoration work on old dams throughout the nation. It has also seen the native fish population grow beyond expectations.

There was also a documentary made about the restoration by NAU, which can be seen more in-depth at http://www.mpcer.nau.edu/riverreborn/.

Others involved included the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as the Yavapai-Apache Nation, American Rivers, Arizona Riparian Council, Center for Biological Diversity, The Nature Conservancy, and Northern Arizona Audubon Society.

Muir and Leopold

After reading Muir and Leopold, I have to say that Muir spoke of nature in an interesting way. Not that his writing was very interesting, but the way he spoke of storms and wind made it somewhat interesting.

I felt as if Muir admired the power of nature. He says in the book that “Nature always has something rare to show us”. He also seemed to really be in touch with nature. He frequently talks about nature and uses his senses to describe it. He talks about the “delicious sunshine” and talks about hearing the different sounds and music of nature.

Muir thinks of nature and man as equals. He talks about a “universal struggle for existence”. I feel that here is talking about the struggle between man and nature. He follows that statement by saying “but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but rather an as from fear”. I feel that he is trying to show that he realizes that nature is struggling in their battle with man, but there are still places that nature is “winning” and untouched. He furthers his belief that man and nature are equals by invincible gladness as a remote from exultation saying “We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men”.

Leopold is more protective of nature in my mind. Yes, he was still in admiration of nature, but he I also felt that he felt that mankind had a right to protect nature and that they were abusing it. I feel that he also feels that man and nature are equals, though. He states “That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.” In this statement, not only does he stress the equality of men and nature, but he is stating a reliance that man has on nature, and that nature has on man.

Leopold feels that nature and man should live together, but not step on each other’s boundaries, that man should respect nature. He said, “The combined evidence of history and ecology seems to support one general deduction: the less violent the man-made changes, the greater the probability of successful readjustment in the pyramid.”