NEWS

Federal court rules Rayonier Inc.'s dark discharges into Altamaha River do not violate permits

Rayonier pleased with ruling and working to comply with new, more stringent discharge rules, spokesman says

Terry Dickson

BRUNSWICK | A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Rayonier in which environmentalists asserted the company violates the Clean Water Act with its discharge of dark effluent into the Altamaha River at its Jesup mill.

In a 27-page order signed Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood granted Rayonier's motion for summary judgment and found that the company was in compliance with its state-issued water quality permit.

Law firms that represented the Riverkeeper expressed disappointment, but asserted that it will go forward in its efforts to compel Rayonier to clean up its discharges.

Russell Schweiss, spokesman for Rayonier Advanced Materials, which now operates the mill and another in Fernandina Beach, said the company was encouraged the suit was dismissed.

As for the Riverkeeper's claims that the discharges were dark and foul-smelling, Schweiss said the court did not establish that as a fact and the company is focused on a new permit to comply with tighter restrictions in color, total suspended solids and chlorinated organics in its effluent.

"They've tightened up the standards significantly," Schweiss said.

On the first page of her order, Wood laid out the basis for her ruling that Georgia's water quality standards for color, odor and turbidity could not be applied as Altamaha Riverkeeper Inc. asked in a suit filed a year ago against Rayonier Inc. and Rayonier Performance Fibers, the operators of the mill at the time.

"On its face, this case is about the Clean Water Act. But the heart of the matter is strictly a question of contract law," Wood wrote.

And in interpreting the contract language, Wood found that Rayonier's permit issued by the Environmental Protection Division did not incorporate the state's water quality standards that the Riverkeeper argued the company has repeatedly violated.

The Riverkeeper complained that Rayonier's wastewater is so much darker than the Altamaha that satellite images show a "distinctly dark plume originating at Rayonier's discharge point and continuing far downstream," Wood noted.

The wastewater discharge is so malodorous, Wood wrote, quoting the Riverkeeper's complaint, "that words are not adequate to convey the smell."

Wood said her ruling does not suggest that Rayonier's discharge isn't harming the river or that the Riverkeeper's allegations of injuries are trivial.

"To the contrary, those effects may be deleterious, and Rayonier's discharges may, in fact, violate Georgia's narrative water quality standards," she wrote, but the Riverkeeper had failed to show that compliance with the standards is a condition of the permit.

Wood also wrote that the Riverkeeper is not without recourse, that it could ask the EPD to modify Rayonier's permit to explicitly include the water quality standards as conditions.

If the EPD intends to incorporate those standards as conditions, "then this order likely satisfies any precondition required for such modification," she wrote.

Nate Hunt, a senior lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which was one of three firms that represented the Riverkeeper, said that Wood's decision was disappointing but she nonetheless indicated that Rayonier's discharges may violate Georgia's water quality standards.

It is up to the EPD to enforce those standards, Hunt said, and ''it is time for the state to finally do so."

Hutton Brown, a senior attorney for GreenLaw, called the ruling a setback and said the Riverkeeper is determined to continue its efforts to clean up the Altamaha.

The ruling also provides a basis to petition the EPD to make the water quality standards requirements of the permit, Brown said.

The permit conditions could soon become moot because the company is working now to secure a new discharge permit.

Schweiss said Rayonier Advanced Products, which was spun off by Rayonier Inc., is focused on that new permit, which is now in the draft phase, "and making sure we can comply with the new limits on color."

When the mill reduces its color, as it has by about 60 percent, the suspended solids and other components of the discharge also decline, Schweiss said.

Schweiss said the images that critics of Rayonier keep circulating don't show improvements in the color of the discharge.

"If you look at Google Earth now, there's a significant difference," he said.

Schweiss said he couldn't predict when EPD would issue a new permit; that timing is under the control of the regulator. The EPD conducted a public hearing on the permit this week in Jesup and will accept public comment until April 10, he said.

Until a new permit is issued, Rayonier will continue operating under the existing one that was the object of the suit and Wood's ruling, he said.

Terry Dickson: (912) 264-0405