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Pollution Pouring into State Waters: Mississippi Phosphates Plant One of the Worst

Posted on: Wednesday, 29 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Mike Keller, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.

Mar. 29--A March report produced by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group assessing 18 months worth of pollutant discharge into America's waters reveals widespread industrial and municipal permit violations, some of the highest being in Mississippi.

The group used information that major industrial plants and municipal water and sewer facilities are required to report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. USPIRG, a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy group, looked at all data from July 1, 2003, toDec. 31, 2004.

"This report reveals that facilities across the country are continuing to pollute," said Christy Leavitt, the clean water advocate at USPIRG. "In Mississippi, 63 percent of facilities exceeded their federal permits. The average facility exceeded their permit limit by 486 percent. That is about six times the legal limit."

A closer look at the Coast revealed at least one permit violator in each of the three coastal counties.

The data, available on the USPIRG Web site, showed that the most egregious violations happened at Jackson County's Mississippi Phosphates Corp., which produces more than 900,000 tons of diammonium phosphate fertilizer a year.

"Mississippi Phosphates is one of the 35 facilities in the country that exceeded their permit limits every month that we looked at," Leavitt said. "There is a history of chronic repeat exceedence of their permits."

The Clean Water Act requires industrial and municipal sewage treatment plants to get permits to release pollutants into waterways, stating as a goal "that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985."

"Industry and the government agencies share the blame for these violations. The industries are at fault for not racheting down their discharges and it is the regulatory agencies' faults for not enforcing permit limits," Leavitt said.

Don Watts, the head enforcement and compliance officer at Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality, said his agency was not ignoring the violations.

"I recognize most of those facilities as people we had some type of enforcement action against duringthe time frame of the report," Watts said. "We did not allow the (permit) exceedences. It's up to us to take action to bring people back in compliance and that is what we do."

Richard Rebich, a water quality specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Jackson, said it is well known that the Coast historically suffers from bacterial and industrial wastewater contamination.

"In the three coastal counties, there are lots of unsewered communities and failing systems that contribute to the problem," Rebich said.

"The big problems throughout the state are suspended sediments in water that block out light, bacterial contamination and some hotspots with atmospheric mercury problems."

To see a list of South Mississippi violators go to www.sunherald.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.)

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